Compare FastAPI vs. Tornado Web Server

FastAPI is an advanced and high-speed web framework designed for creating APIs using Python 3.7 and later, leveraging standard Python type hints. It boasts exceptional performance that rivals that of NodeJS and Go, largely due to its integration with Starlette and Pydantic. As one of the swiftest frameworks available in the Python ecosystem, it emphasizes reducing code redundancy while providing a variety of features from each parameter declaration. This makes it an excellent choice for developers seeking efficiency and maintainability in their API projects.

Tornado is a web framework for Python that also serves as an asynchronous networking library, initially created at FriendFeed. Utilizing non-blocking network I/O, it has the capability to manage tens of thousands of simultaneous connections, making it particularly suited for applications requiring long-lived user connections, such as long polling and WebSockets. Unlike most Python web frameworks, Tornado does not follow the WSGI standard and is primarily operated with a single thread per process. Although the tornado.wsgi module offers some WSGI compatibility, it is not the main focus of development, and developers are encouraged to utilize Tornado’s own interfaces, like tornado.web, for building applications. It is important to note that Tornado code is generally not designed to be thread-safe. Since version 5.0, Tornado has been integrated with Python's standard library asyncio module, sharing the same default event loop. This integration allows for seamless mixing of libraries that are built for asyncio with Tornado, enhancing its versatility and functionality. As a result, developers can create highly efficient applications that leverage both Tornado's strengths and asyncio's capabilities.