head to head · open source
fastapi vs swag
fastapi has 104,566 GitHub stars, 10,179 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped yesterday. swag has 13,047 stars, 1,494 forks, 476 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. fastapi leads on adoption by 701% (104,566 vs 13,047 stars). fastapi is written in Python under MIT; swag is written in Go under MIT. fastapi has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, swag 11%. fastapi was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (openapi), 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 | swag | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 105K | ★ 13K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-09-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 1.5K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick fastapi if
- You weight community size — 105K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick swag if
- You want the swag feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and swag fits your workflow better
About fastapi
FastAPI framework, high performance, easy to learn, fast to code, ready for production Documentation : Source Code : FastAPI is a modern, fast (high performance), web framework for building APIs with Python based on standard Python type hints. The key features are: Fast : Very high performance, on par with NodeJS and Go (thanks to Starlette and Pydantic). One of the fastest Python frameworks available. Fast to code : Increase the speed to develop features by about 200% to 300%. Fewer bugs : Reduce about 40% of human (developer) induced errors. Intuitive : Great editor support. Completion everywhere. Less time…
read the full fastapi overview →
About swag
swag 🌍 English ∙ 简体中文 ∙ Português Swag converts Go annotations to Swagger Documentation 2.0. We've created a variety of plugins for popular Go web frameworks. This allows you to quickly integrate with an existing Go project (using Swagger UI). Contents Getting started Supported Web Frameworks How to use it with Gin The swag formatter Implementation Status Declarative Comments Format General API Info API Operation Security Examples Descriptions over multiple lines User defined structure with an array type Function scoped struct declaration Model composition in response Add request headers Add response headers…
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Frequently asked questions
Is fastapi or swag more popular?
fastapi has 104,566 GitHub stars and swag has 13,047. fastapi has the larger community by that measure.
Are fastapi and swag free?
Both are open source. fastapi is licensed under MIT and swag under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between fastapi and swag?
fastapi is written in Python and swag 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 swag?
Choose fastapi if you want the larger community (104,566 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose swag if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.