head to head · open source
fastapi vs octelium
fastapi has 102,402 GitHub stars, 9,903 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. octelium has 4,056 stars, 153 forks, 16 open issues and last shipped yesterday. fastapi leads on adoption by 2,425% (102,402 vs 4,056 stars). fastapi is written in Python under MIT; octelium is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. fastapi has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, octelium 4%. octelium 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 | octelium | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 102K | ★ 4.1K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-14 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.9K | ⑂ 153 |
| 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 octelium if
- You want the octelium feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and octelium 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 octelium
Octelium is a free and open source self hosted zero trust secure access platform written in Go under the AGPL 3.0 license. It can operate as a remote access VPN, a ZTNA platform, an ngrok or Cloudflare Tunnel alternative, an API gateway, an AI or LLM gateway, a PaaS like deployment platform, a Kubernetes gateway or ingress, and a homelab infrastructure.
read the full octelium overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is fastapi or octelium more popular?
fastapi has 102,402 GitHub stars and octelium has 4,056. fastapi has the larger community by that measure.
Are fastapi and octelium free?
Both are open source. fastapi is licensed under MIT and octelium under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between fastapi and octelium?
fastapi is written in Python and octelium 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 octelium?
Choose fastapi if you want the larger community (102,402 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose octelium if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.