head to head · open source
fastapi vs goa
fastapi has 102,402 GitHub stars, 9,903 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. goa has 6,101 stars, 583 forks, 38 open issues and last shipped yesterday. fastapi leads on adoption by 1,578% (102,402 vs 6,101 stars). fastapi is written in Python under MIT; goa is written in Go under MIT. fastapi has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, goa 10%. goa was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (api, 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 | goa | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 102K | ★ 6.1K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-14 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.9K | ⑂ 583 |
| 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 goa if
- You want the goa feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and goa 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 goa
Goa is a design first framework for building APIs and microservices in Go. It lives in the Go ecosystem and is distributed under the MIT license, with a repository that has been active for roughly twelve years and currently carries about 6,100 stars, 583 forks, and 38 open issues. Instead of writing transport and boilerplate code by hand, a developer expresses the intent of an API in a type safe domain specific language, and Goa generates the server interfaces, client packages, transport adapters, and documentation from that single design. The project describes itself as generating between 30 and 50 percent of a …
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Frequently asked questions
Is fastapi or goa more popular?
fastapi has 102,402 GitHub stars and goa has 6,101. fastapi has the larger community by that measure.
Are fastapi and goa free?
Both are open source. fastapi is licensed under MIT and goa under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between fastapi and goa?
fastapi is written in Python and goa 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 goa?
Choose fastapi if you want the larger community (102,402 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose goa if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.