head to head · open source
fastapi vs optillm
fastapi has 102,471 GitHub stars, 9,913 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. optillm has 4,296 stars, 388 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. fastapi leads on adoption by 2,285% (102,471 vs 4,296 stars). fastapi is written in Python under MIT; optillm is written in Python under Apache-2.0. fastapi has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, optillm 9%. fastapi 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 | optillm | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 102K | ★ 4.3K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.9K | ⑂ 388 |
| 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 optillm if
- You want the optillm feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and optillm 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 optillm
OptiLLM is a Python project that provides an optimizing inference proxy for large language models. It exposes an OpenAI API compatible endpoint and sits between an application and model providers, allowing callers to request reasoning oriented optimizations without changing model weights or adding training. The project lives in the developer tools and API development ecosystem, and its topics connect it to agents, agentic workflows, API gateways, chain of thought prompting, and generative AI inference.
read the full optillm overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is fastapi or optillm more popular?
fastapi has 102,471 GitHub stars and optillm has 4,296. fastapi has the larger community by that measure.
Are fastapi and optillm free?
Both are open source. fastapi is licensed under MIT and optillm under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between fastapi and optillm?
fastapi is written in Python and optillm 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 optillm?
Choose fastapi if you want the larger community (102,471 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose optillm if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.