head to head · open source
fastapi vs litestar
fastapi has 102,402 GitHub stars, 9,903 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. litestar has 8,467 stars, 646 forks, 343 open issues and last shipped yesterday. fastapi leads on adoption by 1,109% (102,402 vs 8,467 stars). fastapi is written in Python under MIT; litestar is written in Python under MIT. fastapi has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, litestar 8%. litestar was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 5 topic tags (api, asyncio, openapi, pydantic), 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 | litestar | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 102K | ★ 8.5K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-14 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.9K | ⑂ 646 |
| 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 litestar if
- You want the litestar feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and litestar 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 litestar
Litestar is an open source ASGI framework for Python, distributed under the MIT license and hosted in the litestar org GitHub organization. It describes itself as light, flexible and extensible, and it is built to scale. The project has been in development for five years, has accumulated 8,462 stars and 642 forks, and its most recent push was on 11 September 2026. Documentation lives at docs.litestar.dev, and the project publishes releases through PyPI.
read the full litestar overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is fastapi or litestar more popular?
fastapi has 102,402 GitHub stars and litestar has 8,467. fastapi has the larger community by that measure.
Are fastapi and litestar free?
Both are open source. fastapi is licensed under MIT and litestar under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between fastapi and litestar?
fastapi is written in Python and litestar in Python. 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 litestar?
Choose fastapi if you want the larger community (102,402 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose litestar if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.