head to head · open source
fastapi vs grpc-gateway
fastapi has 102,402 GitHub stars, 9,903 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. grpc-gateway has 20,001 stars, 2,409 forks, 149 open issues and last shipped yesterday. fastapi leads on adoption by 412% (102,402 vs 20,001 stars). fastapi is written in Python under MIT; grpc-gateway is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause. fastapi has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, grpc-gateway 12%. grpc-gateway 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.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| fastapi | grpc-gateway | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 102K | ★ 20K |
| License | MIT | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-14 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.9K | ⑂ 2.4K |
| 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 grpc-gateway if
- You want the grpc-gateway feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and grpc-gateway 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 grpc-gateway
gRPC Gateway is a plugin for protoc , the Google protocol buffers compiler. It reads protobuf service definitions and generates a reverse proxy server that translates a RESTful HTTP API into gRPC. The generated server follows the google.api.http annotations attached to those service definitions, so a single set of protobuf services can be exposed in both gRPC and RESTful style at the same time. It lives in the gRPC ecosystem, is written in Go, and is distributed under the BSD 3 Clause license.
read the full grpc-gateway overview →
More in Developer Tools
Related comparisons
More API Development & Testing projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the API Development & Testing field.
Frequently asked questions
Is fastapi or grpc-gateway more popular?
fastapi has 102,402 GitHub stars and grpc-gateway has 20,001. fastapi has the larger community by that measure.
Are fastapi and grpc-gateway free?
Both are open source. fastapi is licensed under MIT and grpc-gateway under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between fastapi and grpc-gateway?
fastapi is written in Python and grpc-gateway 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 grpc-gateway?
Choose fastapi if you want the larger community (102,402 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose grpc-gateway if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.