head to head · open source
fastapi vs higress
fastapi has 102,402 GitHub stars, 9,903 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. higress has 9,397 stars, 1,304 forks, 1,114 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. fastapi leads on adoption by 990% (102,402 vs 9,397 stars). fastapi is written in Python under MIT; higress is written in Go under Apache-2.0. fastapi has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, higress 14%. fastapi was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | higress | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 102K | ★ 9.4K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-14 | 2026-09-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.9K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| 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 higress if
- You want the higress feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and higress 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 higress
Higress is a cloud native, AI native API gateway built on Istio and Envoy that targets platform engineering and AI infrastructure teams who need to route LLM API traffic and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers through a single extensible, self hosted gateway.
read the full higress overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is fastapi or higress more popular?
fastapi has 102,402 GitHub stars and higress has 9,397. fastapi has the larger community by that measure.
Are fastapi and higress free?
Both are open source. fastapi is licensed under MIT and higress under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between fastapi and higress?
fastapi is written in Python and higress 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 higress?
Choose fastapi if you want the larger community (102,402 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose higress if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.