head to head · open source
fastapi vs go-restful
fastapi has 104,566 GitHub stars, 10,179 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped yesterday. go-restful has 5,114 stars, 676 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped 20 days ago. fastapi leads on adoption by 1,945% (104,566 vs 5,114 stars). fastapi is written in Python under MIT; go-restful is written in Go under MIT. fastapi has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, go-restful 13%. fastapi was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (openapi), 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 | go-restful | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 105K | ★ 5.1K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 676 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick fastapi if
- You weight community size — 105K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick go-restful if
- You want the go-restful feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and go-restful fits your workflow better
About fastapi
FastAPI framework, high performance, easy to learn, fast to code, ready for production Documentation : Source Code : FastAPI is a modern, fast (high performance), web framework for building APIs with Python based on standard Python type hints. The key features are: Fast : Very high performance, on par with NodeJS and Go (thanks to Starlette and Pydantic). One of the fastest Python frameworks available. Fast to code : Increase the speed to develop features by about 200% to 300%. Fewer bugs : Reduce about 40% of human (developer) induced errors. Intuitive : Great editor support. Completion everywhere. Less time…
read the full fastapi overview →
About go-restful
go restful ========== package for building REST style Web Services using Google Go Code examples use v3 REST asks developers to use HTTP methods explicitly and in a way that's consistent with the protocol definition. This basic REST design principle establishes a one to one mapping between create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) operations and HTTP methods. According to this mapping: GET = Retrieve a representation of a resource POST = Create if you are sending content to the server to create a subordinate of the specified resource collection, using some server side algorithm. PUT = Create if you are sending the…
read the full go-restful overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is fastapi or go-restful more popular?
fastapi has 104,566 GitHub stars and go-restful has 5,114. fastapi has the larger community by that measure.
Are fastapi and go-restful free?
Both are open source. fastapi is licensed under MIT and go-restful under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between fastapi and go-restful?
fastapi is written in Python and go-restful in Go. 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 go-restful?
Choose fastapi if you want the larger community (104,566 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose go-restful if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.