head to head · open source
fastapi vs spring-cloud-gateway
fastapi has 102,402 GitHub stars, 9,903 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. spring-cloud-gateway has 4,908 stars, 3,478 forks, 548 open issues and last shipped yesterday. fastapi leads on adoption by 1,986% (102,402 vs 4,908 stars). fastapi is written in Python under MIT; spring-cloud-gateway is written in Java under Apache-2.0. fastapi has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, spring-cloud-gateway 71%. spring-cloud-gateway 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 | spring-cloud-gateway | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 102K | ★ 4.9K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-14 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.9K | ⑂ 3.5K |
| 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 spring-cloud-gateway if
- You want the spring-cloud-gateway feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and spring-cloud-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 spring-cloud-gateway
spring cloud gateway is an API Gateway built on Spring Framework and Spring Boot, and it lives in the Java, Spring Cloud, and microservices ecosystem. It sits in front of services and decides how incoming HTTP requests should be proxied to downstream endpoints.
read the full spring-cloud-gateway overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is fastapi or spring-cloud-gateway more popular?
fastapi has 102,402 GitHub stars and spring-cloud-gateway has 4,908. fastapi has the larger community by that measure.
Are fastapi and spring-cloud-gateway free?
Both are open source. fastapi is licensed under MIT and spring-cloud-gateway under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between fastapi and spring-cloud-gateway?
fastapi is written in Python and spring-cloud-gateway in Java. 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 spring-cloud-gateway?
Choose fastapi if you want the larger community (102,402 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose spring-cloud-gateway if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.