head to head · open source
fastapi vs Tyk
fastapi has 102,402 GitHub stars, 9,903 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Tyk has 10,822 stars, 1,166 forks, 509 open issues and last shipped yesterday. fastapi leads on adoption by 846% (102,402 vs 10,822 stars). fastapi is written in Python under MIT; Tyk is written in Go under a custom or non-standard licence. fastapi has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, Tyk 11%. Tyk was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (api), 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 | Tyk | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 102K | ★ 11K |
| License | MIT | Custom / other |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-14 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.9K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| 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 Tyk if
- You want the Tyk feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Tyk 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 Tyk
Tyk is an open source API Gateway written in Go. The GitHub description names Tyk as an Open Source API Gateway written in Go, supporting REST, GraphQL, TCP and gRPC protocols. The tagline names it a Universal API management for REST, GraphQL, gRPC and async. It lives in the developer tools, API development and testing ecosystem. It acts as a reverse proxy for microservices and cloud native workloads.
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Frequently asked questions
Is fastapi or Tyk more popular?
fastapi has 102,402 GitHub stars and Tyk has 10,822. fastapi has the larger community by that measure.
Are fastapi and Tyk free?
Both are open source. fastapi is licensed under MIT, and Tyk has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between fastapi and Tyk?
fastapi is written in Python and Tyk 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 Tyk?
Choose fastapi if you want the larger community (102,402 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Tyk if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.