head to head · open source
fastapi vs Krakend
fastapi has 102,402 GitHub stars, 9,903 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Krakend has 2,682 stars, 501 forks, 37 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. fastapi leads on adoption by 3,718% (102,402 vs 2,682 stars). fastapi is written in Python under MIT; Krakend is written in Go under Apache-2.0. fastapi has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, Krakend 19%. fastapi was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (async), 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 | Krakend | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 102K | ★ 2.7K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-14 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.9K | ⑂ 501 |
| 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 Krakend if
- You want the Krakend 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 Krakend 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 Krakend
KrakenD Community Edition is the open source distribution of the KrakenD API Gateway, a high performance, stateless, declarative gateway written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 license. It lives in the cloud native developer tooling ecosystem, alongside Kubernetes, Docker, and Go based backend services, and it is catalogued here under Developer Tools / API Development & Testing. The project is extensible and platform agnostic, and it runs both in cloud native environments and on self hosted on premises infrastructure.
read the full Krakend overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is fastapi or Krakend more popular?
fastapi has 102,402 GitHub stars and Krakend has 2,682. fastapi has the larger community by that measure.
Are fastapi and Krakend free?
Both are open source. fastapi is licensed under MIT and Krakend under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between fastapi and Krakend?
fastapi is written in Python and Krakend 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 Krakend?
Choose fastapi if you want the larger community (102,402 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Krakend if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.