Django vs FastAPI for Solo Developers

If you need a complete web application with an admin panel, auth system, and ORM ready to go, pick Django. If you are building a high-performance API backend and want automatic documentation with type safety, go with FastAPI.

What is Django?

Django is a batteries-included Python web framework that has powered production applications since 2005. It ships with an ORM, admin panel, authentication, form handling, and session management. For solo developers, Django means less time assembling tools and more time building your actual product.

What is FastAPI?

FastAPI is a modern, async-first Python framework built on Starlette and Pydantic. It uses Python type hints to auto-generate OpenAPI docs, validate requests, and serialize responses. Performance benchmarks consistently put it among the fastest Python frameworks available, rivaling Node.js in throughput.

Feature Comparison

When to Pick Django

Choose Django when you are building a full web application, not just an API. The admin panel alone saves solo developers weeks of work. Instead of building a custom dashboard to manage users, content, or settings, Django generates one from your data models automatically.

Django is the right call when your project needs user registration, server-rendered pages, form handling, or any traditional web app functionality. The ecosystem has mature packages for payments, social auth, file uploads, and nearly every common requirement. You rarely have to build something from scratch.

If you are launching a SaaS product, content platform, or e-commerce site as a solo developer, Django gives you the most functionality out of the box. Time is your scarcest resource, and Django respects that.

When to Pick FastAPI

Choose FastAPI when you are building a pure API that a React, Vue, or mobile frontend will consume. If your backend only needs to serve JSON, FastAPI does that faster and with better developer ergonomics than Django REST Framework.

FastAPI is also the better pick for data-heavy or ML-adjacent projects. Native async means your app handles concurrent requests to external services efficiently. Pydantic validation catches bad data before it reaches your business logic. The auto-generated docs make it easy to test endpoints without Postman.

If you are building a webhook handler, a microservice, or a backend for a mobile app, FastAPI gets you from zero to production faster for those specific use cases.

Solo Developer Verdict

Django is the safer default for most solo developers. The admin panel, built-in auth, and ORM eliminate entire categories of work. You get a production-ready foundation on day one without assembling anything yourself.

Pick FastAPI specifically when you are building an API-only backend and do not need any of Django's full-stack features. It excels at that job. But for most solo projects that need a complete backend, Django's batteries-included approach saves you more time overall.

Both are Python, so your skills transfer. Many developers use Django for their main product and FastAPI for lightweight services on the side.