What Is the Best Python Framework for Web Development?

Python is one of the most actively-applied programming languages in the world, and it has become an ultimate tool for many purposes within software development. There is a great variety of Python use cases, like its use for desktop and web app development, data science and machine learning, scripting, game creation, and others. While all of these areas are important, web development is currently one of the most relevant ways for business expansion. Python offers a wide diversity of frameworks available for web development, each with its own set of use cases, benefits, and features. The popularity of these frameworks highly varies, with some being integral and multipurpose, while others being picked for more specific requirements. 

According to a 2021 survey conducted by JetBrains, Flask is the most popular Python web framework, followed by Django and FastAPI. Other demanded frameworks incorporate Tornado, web2py, Bottle, CherryPy, and many others. In this article, we’ll explore some of the most popular Python frameworks for web development, highlight the cases where it is reasonable to choose one to another option, to assist you in selecting the relevant framework for your next project.

 

Python Web Frameworks

Let’s primarily discover the list of Python development frameworks and briefly characterize them.

 

• • Django – a high-level framework that provides a complete solution for building web applications, with built-in support for databases, templating, authentication, and more. It ensures scalability, security, and easiness of usage.
  • Flask – a lightweight web app framework that optimizes the process of building small solutions quickly and easily, with minimal overhead.
  • Pyramid – an open-source framework well-suited for designing complex web products. It delivers a range of features and instruments for creating scalable and maintainable web applications.
  • Bottle – another lightweight framework mainly used to implement simple web applications at a decreased time-to-market.
  • CherryPy – a powerful and flexible Python web framework that is well-suited for building high-performance, robust, and scalable solutions.
  • TurboGears – a full-stack framework that comprises extensive functionality and instruments to be modular and easy to use, with a range of built-in features and tools.
  • FastAPI – a modern, rapid, and powerful framework for API creation, making the development process easy and straightforward. 
  • Quart – an asynchronous framework for implementing web products that need to be scalable, robust, and solid, ensuring appropriate instruments for this goal.
  • Sanic – a fast and scalable framework that is also an excellent option for web apps that have a high workload. 

 

Python web development frameworks

 

Framework	Benefits	Drawbacks
Django	Full-stack framework, built-in support for databases, authentication, and more.	Can be slow and memory-intensive for small applications.
Flask	Lightweight and flexible, easy to use.	Limited built-in features, requires third-party libraries.
Pyramid	Flexible and modular, chosen for complex applications.	May seem complex and difficult to learn for beginners.
Bottle	Lightweight and fast, easy to use.	Bounded built-in features, may require third-party libraries.
CherryPy	Powerful and flexible, well-suited for high-performance applications.	Can be complicated to study for the beginners
TurboGears	Full-stack framework, modular and intuitive.	May not be as widely used or supported as other frameworks.
FastAPI	Fast and high-performance, well-suited for building APIs.	May require more advanced knowledge of Python and web development.
Quart	Asynchronous and high-performance, great for creating scalable applications.	May require more advanced knowledge of Python and web development.
Sanic	Fast and scalable, relevant for building high-performance applications.	May require more advanced knowledge of Python and web development.

Moving on, we would like to consider which Python frameworks are relevant considering a range of specific needs.

 

 

For software development (SaaS)

Among the entire list of options, Django is considered to be the best Python web framework for developing SaaS (Software as a Service) products. It ensures fast and efficient development thanks to its built-in features and functionality. Therefore, developers can faster build SaaS solutions with the help of out-of-the-box functionality provided by Django. Such functionality might only require simple fine-tuning and customization to meet the unique requirements.. This saves effort and reduces milestones. What’s more, SaaS applications need to be scalable to handle the growing demand for services. With Django development, it is possible to scale the app both horizontally and vertically by adding more machines or servers to the existing infrastructure and more resources (CPU, RAM, storage) to the current server. This will make it easier to handle large amounts of data and traffic.

Often dealing with sensitive data, a SaaS product makes security a top priority, that’s why it is reasonable to use Django. The framework offers a range of protection measures such as authentication, authorization, and secure storage of passwords and sensitive information. Aside from that, excellent customization of Django allows software engineers to design SaaS applications tailored to particular requirements, streamlining the development of unique and feature-rich SaaS applications. You also get high compatibility with diverse databases, like MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite. Due to the fact that Django enables you to integrate your product with other software and tools, it provides flexibility within the SaaS implementation.

 

For MVP

Flask, a Python-based micro web framework, is perfect when it comes to the Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) creation. It is pretty plain yet, robust framework that includes all the essential instruments for the products covering vital functionality. Developers can quickly and efficiently execute the development flow without the need for too much boilerplate code. The framework is designed to provide only the necessary features and functionality, which helps in keeping the codebase small and manageable. Flask’s flexibility is sufficient to accommodate different types of applications, simplifying the development flow of functional and robust MVPs. Moreover, it can be easily integrated with various libraries for Python web development like SQLAlchemy, WTForms, and Jinja2. to leverage existing code and resources, reducing the time and effort required for software implementation. Flask also allows your app to be scalable to cope efficiently with a large number of users and processes. 

Flask perfectly aligns with the requirements of small projects. It is lightweight, concise, and has sufficient functionality with no redundant features. However, its minimalistic nature of  isn’t suitable for larger projects since they often require more cababilities than Flask can offer.. For example, this framework doesn’t provide an admin panel by default unlike Django. With expanding the project, you will need to develop typical features from scratch that are available in other frameworks like Django by default. So while developing an MVP with Flask, you have to keep the scalability limit in mind. 

Flask provides flexibility in terms of how you structure your application. Essentially, this means that this framework does not enforce a particular way of organizing application code and instead allows developers to choose how they want to structure their code based on their individual needs and preferences. This, however, can also be a disadvantage when working on large-scale software. As the project grows and more developers join the team, they should keep a well-defined structure for the application code. Having a huge team, it may become a challenge to maintain a consistent and organized codebase.  As a result, developers may end up creating their own structures or patterns, which can result in a fragmented codebase that is difficult to navigate and understand.

 

For startups

Startups need a reliable and efficient technology stack to build and scale their applications. Flask and Django are two popular options that are great for startups. Both of these frameworks are ideal for startups with limited resources since they provide simple and intuitive APIs that allow developers to quickly build and deploy their applications. Flask and Django allow the easy scalability of tech products to handle the raised amount of customers without decreasing their experience.

To create unique and original applications that stand out in the market, each of these frameworks offers perfect customizability, enabling developers to create unique and multifunctional applications that meet their specific needs. With a large and active community of Flask and Django specialists who contribute to their development and offer support to others, startups have access to a wealth of knowledge, resources, and tools to help and scale the applications more productively. Talking about the security level, both options provide a range of security measures to protect private customer details. It is essential for startups, as they have to prove themselves reliable from the initial stage.

 

For APIs

For API development, FastAPI and Django REST Framework (DRF) are both powerful frameworks. While both have their individual strengths, they share several key advantages that make them great choices for API development. Firstly, both FastAPI and DRF are designed to be highly performant. FastAPI is built on top of the Starlette framework, which uses asyncio to enable asynchronous request handling. This allows for highly efficient and scalable APIs, especially when dealing with large volumes of requests. DRF, on the other hand, is built on top of Django, which has a reputation for being highly performant and scalable. Besides, both options offer excellent support for documentation. FastAPI uses OpenAPI and Swagger to automatically generate API documentation, which is both highly customizable and readable. As a result, it is simpler for developers to create and maintain API documentation, which is critical for ensuring that APIs are easy to understand and use. Another benefit of both FastAPI and DRF is their support for the serialization and deserialization of data. These frameworks are able to easily convert data between different formats, such as JSON and Python objects, which is integral when working with APIs. Thus, the integration with other systems is smooth and seamless, and the web API processes the data in a flexible and efficient manner.

In addition, both FastAPI and Django REST frameworks are highly extensible and support a wide range of plugins and add-ons. Developers can extend the functionality of the API and cut down development time while also ensuring that APIs are highly functional and secure.

 

For small apps

Small app development requires lightweight and flexible web frameworks, that’s why Flask and Bottle are the wise options. They both have a minimalistic design and offer only the core functionality needed to build a web application, where simplicity and ease of use are essential. In addition, the high flexibility of Flask and Bottle enables you to meet the requirements of small-scale projects effectively. With a modular approach of Flask, tech specialists can adapt the functionality as needed, making the process easy and fast. Bottle offers a simple and intuitive syntax, decreasing the time spent on the development flow. If your simple app requires excellent support for extensions and plugins, each of these frameworks has a vast ecosystem of tools that can be used to add advanced functionality to the software. This may refer to features such as user identification, database implementation, and caching, among others. It implies the tech team can add new functions without having to reinvent the wheel.

 

For dockerization

When choosing the best Python web frameworks for dockerization, we can mention Flask and Django. They are highly modular frameworks that are excellent for a microservice development. At the same time, Django is considered to be the better optionfor microservices that encapsulate relatively complex logic. This makes it easy to break down an application into smaller, self-contained components that can be dockerized and run in containers. Besides, tech experts can easily scale an application horizontally by adding more containers to deal with the raised traffic and workload. Both frameworks have excellent support for REST API, with built-in features for serialization, authentication, and routing, which makes them ideal for building microservices. Both frameworks offer flawless support for database management. They have powerful Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) systems that make it easy to work with databases, containerize an application and its associated database, which simplifies the deployment and data management process.

Each option offers numerous plugins and extensions that can be used to automate the roadmap of building, testing, and deploying containers. Thus, it’s easier for software engineers to integrate dockerization into the development workflow and to robotize the deployment of containerized applications.

 

For web apps

Considering which Python framework is best for web development, we should pick a great and universal tool. Django has been used by countless developers to build everything from simple blogs to complex networks and is often selected due to its intuitiveness, flexibility, and potency.  It offers a great variety of features and modules applied to implementing almost any kind of web application. With its high degree of flexibility and adaptiveness, Django is currently the best Python framework for web development. It fits the varying sizes, industries, and complexity. It has a robust security framework that includes embedded protection against common security threats, such as cross-site scripting (XSS) and SQL injection attacks. This guarantees that web apps built with Django are highly secure and reliable, even when dealing with sensitive data.

 

For Backend

Flask and Django are the most popular backend web frameworks in the Python ecosystem. They are both highly universal and adjustable, making them ideal for building complex and scalable web applications. Here are some reasons why Flask and Django are great choices for backend development. 

Primarily, both Flask and Django provide a modular and extensible architecture. With it, developers can build backend applications that are scalable and can handle large amounts of traffic. What’s more, Flask is a micro-framework that is highly adaptive and allows developers to build applications with only vital elements. In comparison, Django is a full-stack web framework that comes with a lot of pre-built functions and features.

Moreover, both options provide excellent support for ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) systems. Consequently, if your project requires working with database-driven features, it is wise to apply the mentioned frameworks to the backend. Flask offers developers an extended choice of ORM systems like SQLAlchemy, Peewee, and Pony ORM. Django has its own ORM system that helps manage database models, relationships, and migrations.

Each framework provides a range of instruments and libraries that can be utilized for RESTful APIs creation. Flask has its own Flask-RESTful library, and Django ensures the Django REST framework, which is a strong and elastic toolkit for RESTful APIs creation.

 

For advanced sites

Python ecosystem offers a time-tested choice for designing advanced and complex web service products that require increased customization and power. Developers make use of its modular architecture to simplify the creation of sophisticated functionality. It also incorporates a strong Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture that separates the logic and presentation layers, which is a great option for developing and maintaining complex software. A range of ready-made components, such as authentication, caching, and middleware, can be easily integrated into the website. As we’ve also already mentioned, Django’s ORM support simplifies the operation of databases, models, relationships, and migrations. Thus, websites that are data-driven and that must manage a vast pool of data should consider Django. The framework also guarantees scalability and performance. Horizontal scaling is an easy way to handle this challenge with Django by expanding the number of servers or containers. A variety of Django’s caching mechanisms can boost the performance of the website.

 

For simple websites

Flask and Bottle are a couple of flexible and lightweight frameworks which can assist you in creating simple websites.

Their minimalist approach to web development is perfect for elementary sites. They provide only the basic construction blocks required for a concise website. Therefore, tech specialists know how to use it efficiently, comprising a large pool of professionals and increasing the range to choose from. Flask is simple and flexible, and these traits make it a popular choice for producing small and medium-sized websites.

Secondly, Flask and Bottle provide a high degree of customization and flexibility. They allow developers to build websites with only the necessary components so that websites can be built quickly and efficiently. Flask and Bottle are both highly modular and extensible, which means that developers can easily add new functionality to the website as needed.

A great value of Flask and Bottle is their excellent support for templating engines. Each of them provides a range of templating engines that can be used to generate dynamic content for the website. For this, Jinja2 is considered to be a standard for Flask. As a result, websites are both visually appealing and functional. Flask and Bottle are appreciated for their versatility and adaptability. They offer developers the flexibility to construct websites with the required features, leading to efficient and speedy development. The modular and extensible nature of these frameworks also allows developers to introduce new functions with ease.

 

Case Studies

 

For microservices

Flask and FastAPI are both highly flexible and lightweight, making them ideal for building microservices with a minimum of overhead. They comprise a minimalist approach to web development, which implies that they provide only the basic building blocks needed to build a microservice. Flask, in particular, is popular and widely applied for its simplicity and flexibility, which is perfect for building small and medium-sized microservices. Both options are highly modular and extensible, so you can adjust the functionality to the microservice on demand.

 

For social networks

One of the reasons why Django is great for building social networks is its flexibility and scalability. It provides a comprehensive set of primary functions that are essential for developing social networks. They include authentication, authorization, user profiles, and social networking functionalities such as likes, comments, and messaging. A powerful ORM (Object Relational Mapper) is also a part of Django that enhances the work with complex data models, which is key for building social networks with a large amount of user-generated content. The Django kit of third-party packages and plugins includes everything from advanced search functionalities to social media integration, making it easy to tailor the social network to the specific needs of the project.

The architecture of this framework is designed to cope productively with high workloads, which guarantees perfect performance regardless of the number of users. The framework offers a range of tools and techniques for optimizing performance, comprising caching, database sharding, and load balancing.

 

For data visualization 

Dash is a powerful data visualization framework built on top of Flask and a Python-powered library called Plotly. This combination of technologies makes it easy to create interactive and customizable data representations and visualizations. Dash is the best web framework for Python data visualization, delivering a range of features and tools for designing interactive, web-based data visualizations. The key components of Dash are a set of pre-built interactive components such as sliders, dropdowns, graphs, charts, tables, maps, and more. The framework also offers HTML tags that can be used to define the layout and structure of a Dash application. Therefore, it is possible to explore and analyze complex datasets in a dynamic and engaging way.

 

For asynchronous websites

Asynchronous programming allows web applications to handle multiple requests simultaneously, resulting in faster and more efficient web applications. Quart and Sanic are two Python web frameworks that are specifically designed for building asynchronous websites. 

Both frameworks are built on top of the asynchronous networking library asyncio, which provides a high-level API for building asynchronous applications in Python. This allows developers to handle multiple requests simultaneously without having to write complex and error-prone code. These frameworks also provide a range of built-in tools and features for building asynchronous websites, like support for WebSockets, HTTP/2, and server-sent events, which allow web applications to deliver real-time updates to clients without having to constantly refresh the page. Asynchronous programming involving Quart and Sanic allows web applications to handle large numbers of requests with minimal resources, enabling to flawlessly handle the workload.

 

 

FAQ

We would like to emphasize that there is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to choosing the best Python web framework. Each one is best suited for a certain case and depends on the specific needs of that project. Selecting the right one is critical for the success of any software. We encourage you to explore the various options available and use our guide to select the framework that will address the requirements and peculiarities of your solution. To simplify this process, you can always apply to your trustworthy tech vendor PLANEKS. In case you have any questions or need our professional consultation in selecting the right Python framework for your project, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our team of experts. Feel free to check our portfolio, which proves our high competence in Python-powered development. Whether you’re looking to build a SaaS solution, MVP software, a website of any complexity, an API server, or a web service, we’re always here to help you in the tech world.

Book a call with our specialists today and get an all-around consultation about which Python framework fits best for your specific case.