head to head · open source
fastapi vs datamodel-code-generator
fastapi has 102,409 GitHub stars, 9,906 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. datamodel-code-generator has 4,019 stars, 460 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped yesterday. fastapi leads on adoption by 2,448% (102,409 vs 4,019 stars). fastapi is written in Python under MIT; datamodel-code-generator is written in Python under MIT. fastapi has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, datamodel-code-generator 11%. datamodel-code-generator was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (fastapi, json-schema, openapi, pydantic), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| fastapi | datamodel-code-generator | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 102K | ★ 4.0K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-14 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.9K | ⑂ 460 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick fastapi if
- You weight community size — 102K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick datamodel-code-generator if
- You want the datamodel-code-generator feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and datamodel-code-generator fits your workflow better
About fastapi
FastAPI is an MIT licensed, high performance Python web framework for building APIs with standard Python type hints, aimed at Python developers and teams that need production ready HTTP services with automatic OpenAPI documentation.
read the full fastapi overview →
About datamodel-code-generator
datamodel code generator 🚀 Generate Python data models from schema definitions in seconds. 📚 Documentation · 🧪 Playground · 💼 Lead maintainer available for work [!NOTE] Playground privacy: Generation runs locally in your browser with Pyodide. Your schema and options are not sent to a backend. Shared repro URLs encode them in the URL fragment ( state=... ), which browsers do not send to the server; the full URL can still be stored in your browser history or wherever you share it. ✨ What it does Pick any one of the supported inputs and pick the Python model style you want as output. input model path/to/file.py:…
read the full datamodel-code-generator overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is fastapi or datamodel-code-generator more popular?
fastapi has 102,409 GitHub stars and datamodel-code-generator has 4,019. fastapi has the larger community by that measure.
Are fastapi and datamodel-code-generator free?
Both are open source. fastapi is licensed under MIT and datamodel-code-generator under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between fastapi and datamodel-code-generator?
fastapi is written in Python and datamodel-code-generator in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, fastapi or datamodel-code-generator?
Choose fastapi if you want the larger community (102,409 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose datamodel-code-generator if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.