head to head · open source
fastapi vs django-ninja
fastapi has 102,402 GitHub stars, 9,903 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. django-ninja has 9,191 stars, 613 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. fastapi leads on adoption by 1,014% (102,402 vs 9,191 stars). fastapi is written in Python under MIT; django-ninja is written in Python under MIT. fastapi has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, django-ninja 7%. fastapi was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (openapi, pydantic, python), 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 | django-ninja | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 102K | ★ 9.2K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-14 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.9K | ⑂ 613 |
| 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 django-ninja if
- You want the django-ninja feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and django-ninja 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 django-ninja
Django Ninja is a web framework for building APIs with Django and Python 3.6+ type hints. It lives in the Python ecosystem and the Django ecosystem specifically, and it is distributed under the MIT license. The framework is designed around type hints, Pydantic, and async support, and it generates API schemas from the open standards for APIs: OpenAPI (previously known as Swagger) and JSON Schema. A NinjaAPI instance is declared next to the existing Django url configuration and mounted as a normal URL pattern, so the project sits alongside Django rather than replacing any part of it.
read the full django-ninja overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is fastapi or django-ninja more popular?
fastapi has 102,402 GitHub stars and django-ninja has 9,191. fastapi has the larger community by that measure.
Are fastapi and django-ninja free?
Both are open source. fastapi is licensed under MIT and django-ninja under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between fastapi and django-ninja?
fastapi is written in Python and django-ninja 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 django-ninja?
Choose fastapi if you want the larger community (102,402 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose django-ninja if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.