Python is loved by hobbyists, scientists, and architects alike for its simplicity yet immense power and flexibility. With its batteries-included standard library, wealth of third-party packages, high-level abstractions, and metaprogramming capabilities, Python can be used to build anything from small scripts to complex enterprise systems.
While Python has some limitations when it comes to concurrency and static typing, its vibrant ecosystem of web frameworks makes it extremely well-suited for building modern web applications. Choosing the right framework for your next Python project can have significant implications in terms of productivity, scalability, and long-term maintainability.
In this comprehensive guide, we explore the 13 most popular and battle-tested Python web frameworks so you can make an informed decision:
1. Django
Django is the most popular Python web framework and the go-to choice for many developers. As their tagline states, it is a "web framework for perfectionists with deadlines".
Django aims to make common web development tasks fast and easy through its batteries-included philosophy. It provides many built-in features out-of-the-box:
- Object-relational mapper (ORM) for working with databases
- Automatic admin interface generation
- Forms, authentication, authorization
- Session management, cookies, middleware
- XSS and CSRF prevention
- Caching, internationalization, localization
- And much more
This allows developers to build fully-featured web applications very quickly without having to hunt down and integrate various components manually. Django works with virtually all databases and imposes conventions over configurations which accelerates development but reduces flexibility.
Overall, Django is the ideal framework for rapidly building robust and secure web applications of any scale. Its ecosystem is vast and the community is very active.
2. Flask
Flask is a popular microframework that keeps the core simple but extensible. Unlike Django, Flask focuses on being a "microframework" that handles only the bare minimum like routing, request handling, and templating.
Everything else must be imported or implemented manually according to the application‘s needs. This minimalism gives developers extreme flexibility and control to pick the components they want.
Some of Flask‘s key features and philosophies:
- Microframework with simple but extensible core
- Easy for beginners to pick up but powerful for advanced users
- Development server and debugger builtin
- Integrates seamlessly with popular tools like SQLAlchemy
- Embraces WSGI standard and pluggable architectures
- Well-suited for building APIs, microservices and complex web apps
Flask offers unparalleled flexibility but also means more decisions and integration work upfront compared to Django. It remains immensly popular for its simplicity yet capacious nature.
3. FastAPI
FastAPI is a modern Python web framework focused on high performance and native async/await support. It is based on standards like OpenAPI and JSON Schema for API development.
Some notable features of FastAPI include:
- Very high performance – optimal use of async programming
- Automatic interactive API documentation
- Data validation and serialization
- Type annotations and pydantic models
- Easy to learn and use for beginners
- Production-ready with Docker and Kubernetes support
- Supports GraphQL APIs easily
For developers looking to build blazingly fast RESTful APIs, FastAPI combines incredible performance with developer productivity through automatic documentation and code generation.
4. Bottle
Bottle is an extremely lightweight but full-featured microframework inspired by Flask and Sinatra in Ruby. In fact Bottle has no external dependencies at all – just a single Python file needed to run apps!
Salient features of Bottle:
- Single file, zero dependency installation
- Inbuilt templating engine as well as support for others
- Routing, request and response handling
- Stable, async and production-ready WSGI server
- Plugins architecture to add extra functionality cleanly
For tiny apps and APIs where minimalism is valued over batteries-included functionality, Bottle delivers a no-fuss, barebones but powerful framework.
5. CherryPy
CherryPy allows developers to build web applications in much the same way as any other Python library. It is mature, well-tested and suitable for small to large applications.
Some reasons to use CherryPy:
- Object-oriented HTTP framework encouraging clean code
- Built-in multi-threaded server supporting async requests
- Flexible plugin system and tools for caching, encoding etc
- WSGI compliant but also high-performance standalone HTTP server options
- Works on PyPy and Jython for best-of-breed performance
For building performance-critical systems or APIs serving lots of concurrent requests, CherryPy is a robust, scalable choice.
6. Sanic
Sanic is a Python web server and web framework that‘s written to go fast. It allows the usage of the async/await syntax added in Python 3.5, which makes your code non-blocking and speedy.
Some notable features:
- Build for speed and optimized for performance
- Full-featured including routing, middleware, request handling etc
- Async and awits allow non-blocking concurrency
- Plugin architecture similar to Flask
- Type hints for IDE support
For use cases where ultra high performance is mandatory, Sanic is a viable choice. The main caveat is that most Python libraries are still synchronous so truly async systems are hard to build currently.
7. Tornado
Tornado is an asynchronous Python web framework and networking library originally developed at FriendFeed.
Tornado stands out for:
- Non-blocking HTTP server supporting thousands of open connections
- Native coroutine support with async/await syntax
- Easy to scale up and run on multiple processes across machines
- Built-in support for WebSockets
- A clean and well-documented API
If you need to build IO-bound systems like messaging, chat apps or matching engines where concurrency and speed are critical, Tornado is a great choice.
8. Pyramid
Pyramid is pitched as the "Goldilocks" framework – somewhere in between a micro and full-stack framework. It uses sensible defaults but doesn‘t impose strict conventions allowing extreme customizability.
Key aspects of Pyramid:
- Extremely flexible and composable architecture
- Modular components with lots of customization points
- Secure and fast baseline with room to scale up
- ORM and database agnostic. Bring your own!
- Follows WSGI standard for interoperability
For developers looking to build large, customized systems incrementally where flexibility and control are vital, Pyramid offers the best of both worlds.
9. TurboGears
TurboGears brings together multiple best-of-breed Python packages into a cohesive and consistent web development stack. It features reusable components as well as optional bells and whistles.
TurboGears is known for:
- Full-stack framework combining popular Python tools
- Optional components allow you to only use what you need
- Database agnostic. Supports SQL, NoSQL, etc
- Highly modular architecture following WSGI standards
- Horizontal scaling capabilities builtin
For enterprise developers looking for a batteries-included framework that is still flexible and production-ready for large apps, TurboGears hits a sweet spot.
10. CubicWeb
CubicWeb is an open source semantic web framework entirely written in Python. It allows building structured data driven web apps flexibly.
Salient aspects of CubicWeb:
- Framework tailored for semantic web apps
- Domain specific data modeling and querying
- Reusable data components and cubes
- Query language to easily access and modify data
- LDAP, SQL and NoSQL database support
For semantic web applications dealing with interconnected, meaningful data at scale, CubicWeb facilitates building the core engine effectively.
11. Falcon
Falcon is a minimalist Python framework for building high performance HTTP APIs, app backends and microservices. It trades bells and whistles for raw speed.
Falcon is fast because:
- Bare-metal performance thanks to stripped down codebase
- Async handling supported through pluggable backends
- Extremely lightweight with ability to scale up
- Intuitive routing interface for building for RESTful APIs
- Supports both WSGI and ASGI standards
When every millisecond counts, Falcon helps developers squeeze out the best possible throughput and response times from Python web apps.
12. Masonite
Masonite is a developer centric Python web framework aiming to rival frameworks like Laravel and Rails. It uses common patterns for bootstrapping web projects quickly.
Why developers enjoy working with Masonite:
- Heavily inspired by Laravel‘s syntax and patterns
- Useful CLI commands for tasks like migrations
- Out of box authentication system and security features
- MVC architecture with simple routing definitions
- ActiveRecord style ORM called Orator
For developers familiar with frameworks like Laravel or Rails, Masonite will feel instantly familiar and become productive from day one.
13. Web2Py
Web2py is a full-stack Python framework with batteries included. It aims to enable rapid and scalable web application development accessible to all.
Some interesting capabilities provided by web2py:
- No configuration required. Works out of the box
- Inbuilt ticketing system and solid admin interface
- Strong focus on security against threats like XSS and SQLi
- Database abstraction layer supporting most SQL and NoSQL backends
- Packaged via binaries. No need to manage environments and deps locally
Web2py lowers the barrier to entry for Python web development significantly. For non-technical founders and makers, it can help build functional prototypes rapidly without complex setup.
Conclusion
Python‘s rich and diverse ecosystem has framework options for almost every type of web application need. For large enterprise systems, Django and TurboGears offer a lot of out-of-box functionality combined with modularity. Flask and its ilk embody simplicity and control perfect for Medium to large web apps.
High performance use cases can utilize Tornado, Sanic or Falcon‘s async capabilities and optimized code. For ultra rapid prototyping, Masonite and Web2Py allow launching ideas quickly. More niche needs like semantic web apps have options like CubicWeb as well in Python.
The most popular starting points remain Django, Flask and FastAPI – which cover 80% of typical use cases extremely well. But no matter your specific needs and constraints, Python likely has you covered with both batteries-included as well as customizable framework options.
