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22 top trending Python frameworks for 2022

February 15, 2024

22 top trending Python frameworks for 2022
Radu PoclitariRadu Poclitari, Copywriter

This year Python finally dethroned C in the list of most popular programming languages. It has become an instant choice for trends like web development, data science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, scientific computing, and global giants like Netflix, Google, and Instagram. 

As a result, Python frameworks are also rising in popularity. The first thing you should take into consideration while choosing a framework for your project is the project’s size and complexity: microframeworks for small-scale projects and full-stack for larger-scale projects with a lot of features.  

Therefore, this article will walk you through the topmost full-stack, micro-, and asynchronous Python-based frameworks to get you started. 

Types of Python Frameworks

Before diving into the Python framework, let’s understand how many types of Python frameworks are there and what each of them entails.

The Python frameworks are mainly categorized into: 

  • Full-stack framework
  • Micro-framework
  • Asynchronous framework

Here is what each of these frameworks entails: 

A full-stack framework offers an all-in-one solution that comprises front-end UI, back-end logic, and databases. The most popular full-stack frameworks are Django, Flask, and Web2Py.

A micro-framework is an easy-to-use framework designed for small-scale projects. The most popular full-stack frameworks are Bottle, CherryPy, Dash, and Falcon. 

An asynchronous framework is a micro-framework that enables developers to manage a large number of concurrent connections in software and applications. It gained popularity since the release of the Asyncio library. The most popular full-stack frameworks are AIOHTTP, Growler, and Sanic. 

Why use a Python framework

A framework is a collection of modules and packages that enables developers to reuse the code for similar types of HTTP operations and to define the structure of an application with predefined functionalities.

The best thing about Python frameworks is that they are open-source, secure, well documented, and efficient.

Using frameworks makes the life of a Python programmer much easier. Frameworks help software developers automatically reduce development time by automating redundant projects. They also allow software engineers to focus more on the application logic and to be less concerned about protocols, sockets, etc. 

The best part is that Python allows an extensive library of frameworks where every framework has its own pros and cons as per the varied needs of a project. So the choice of framework totally depends on your project requirements. 

Going forward, let's start weighing up the best-ranked Python frameworks for 2022 in their category. 

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Top full-stack Python frameworks 

Django

Considered one of the top Python web frameworks, Django is a free, open-source, and unbelievably powerful framework for large-scale web application and website development. Its main principle - DRY (don’t repeat yourself) - facilitates the software development of complex codes and applications in record time and with maximum flexibility. 

Django’s acclaimed pioneering functionalities and advanced features, including content management, authentication support, file upload support, template engine, URL routing, and database schema migration, make it a top preference among Python developers. Additionally, Django has many built-in libraries and, by default, supports several databases, such as MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, and SQLite. 

Compared to other frameworks, Django has the best documentation in the market that is constantly updated. NASA, Pinterest, and Instagram are the famous companies that used Django to increase the speed, security, and flexibility of the software development process. for the speed, security, and flexibility it provides. 

Key features: 

  • URL routing
  • Authentication support & RSS feeds
  • Prebuilt libraries for a full-stack development
  • MVC-MVT architecture 
  • Compatible with practically all databases 
  • Object-relational mapper (ORM) support
  • Database systems like PostgreSQL, SQLite, and Oracle
  • Security features like SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and clickjacking

Flask 

A good alternative to Django, Flask is a lightweight yet feature-rich Python framework perfectly suited to the web development of small-scale projects and applications. Due to its modular frontend design, rich functionality, plugging in any ORM, and routing, Flask has become one of the developers’ favorite frameworks and now features a fast-growing community of developers and huge documentation. 

Flask is of great use if you are looking to experiment with the latest technologies, architecture, or even libraries. It doesn’t just show support for newer versions of Python, but it also includes support for Jinja2 templating, Werkzeug WSGI toolkit, and the Blueprints system.

Key features:

  • Built-in server & fast debugger 
  • Jinja2 templates & Werkzeug WSGI toolkit
  • Provision for unit testing
  • Unicode based
  • Plugging in any ORM
  • HTTP request handling
  • URL routing
  • Secure cookies
  • Request dispatching 
Python symbol in a circle on a blue background
Python frameworks

Pyramid

Ranked as one of the most popular Python frameworks, Pyramid is an open-source framework with rich documentation on its site and a super-active community that gets bigger with each passing day. It runs on Python 3, follows the MVC architecture and it’s well-known for its flexibility which allows developers to choose their own templating system, database layer, and more leveraging its extensive set of plugins.

Being a lightweight and easy-to-start web framework for both small and large-scale applications, Pyramid’s main objective is to help Python devs build web applications with utmost simplicity and minimal complexity. Its built-in functionality to start small and grow the codebase complexity when needed makes this framework a strong contender for Django. 

Key features:

  • 360-degree code coverage 
  • Comprehensive data documentation
  • Flexible authentication & authorization
  • URL mapping 
  • Asset specifications & templating 

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Giotto

Used for developing applications in a functional style, Giotto is a full-stack Model View Controller (MVC) framework, widely used among Python developers. Based on the MVC pattern, Giotto separates the model, view, and controller, providing independent and distinct functions for developers and system administrators.

One of the best things about using Giotto is it enables users to build apps on top of the web, IRC (Internet Relay Chat), and command line. In addition, it is also designed to help developers facilitate easily maintainable code for a longer period. 

A free RESTful GUI, integrated cache, automatic URL routing, and Jinja2 for API HTML are some of the best features of Giotto. 

Key features:

  • Automatic in-built URL routing
  • Functional CRUD (create, read, update, delete) patterns 
  • Database persistence by SQLAlchemy
  • Free RESTful interfaces 
  • Multiple pluggable controllers 
  • API support for other template engines

Web2Py

Web2Py is an open-source, comprehensive, and scalable Python framework that provides a debugger, a code editor, one-click deployment, and support to all operating systems, including Unix/Linux, Windows, Mac, Amazon, EC2, and Google App Engine. 

The framework enables the MVC model and features built-in modules for handling HTTP requests, cookies, and sessions. With Web2Py, developers can seamlessly develop interactive web content and build custom web applications.

Key features:

  • Protection against XSS, CSFR, and other attacks 
  • Readability of multiple protocols 
  • All operating systems support 
  • No prerequisites for installation or configuration
  • Pure-Python templating

CubicWeb

Being an open-source, free-to-use, and semantic web framework, CubicWeb stands apart from the rest of the frameworks. It operates with the idea of reusing components called cubes, allows software developers to build web apps quickly, and is an excellent choice for the creation of semantic web app development. 

Key features:

  • Support for multiple databases 
  • Reusable components & great security workflow 
  • RQL embedding for simplifying data-related queries 
  • Support for OWL (Web Ontology Language) and RDF (Resource Description Framework) 

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Pylons

Pylons is an open-source web-based Python framework that uses Web Server Gateway Interface. It offers a scalable lightweight platform for quick application development centered on a clean architecture and components that displays everything needed to create websites and applications effectively in record time. 

Key features:

  • HTML form generation and validation
  • URL dispatch
  • Text-based templating
  • URL mapping 

TurboGears

TurboGears is an open-source and data-driven web testing framework that enables Python programmers to rapidly create data-rich web applications powered by data. 

Being a full-stack framework, it employs components like Genshi, WebOb, Repoze, and SQLAlchemy to develop applications that need quick access to database connectivity and requires minimum configuration. In addition, this framework offers software developers a link between Python objects and relational databases, within the usage of ORM. 

Key features:

  • Multiple databases support 
  • Powerful ORM
  • Pluggable architecture
  • Integration with MochiKit JavaScript library
  • PasteScript templates, MVC-style architecture & Plotly Dash

Top Python micro-frameworks 

Bottle

Ranked as one of the best Python micro-frameworks, Bottle is a lightweight and WSGI-compliant framework designed for the rapid development of small-scale web applications. 

Being originally developed for building APIs, Bottle follows a model-view-controller (MVC) architecture which includes routing, caching, and template support. 

One of the most significant components of this framework is its capacity to parse and render the templates with 5 to 10 times the speed of any of the topmost Python web frameworks in the market, which makes it a perfect fit for the development of simple and personal applications. 

Netflix has used Bottle to build its web interfaces.

Key features:

  • Built-in HTTP server
  • Dynamic URL routes & mapping 
  • Speed optimization for high performance & testing
  • Plugin support for different databases
  • Support for file uploads, headers, and cookies
  • Integrated template engine 
  • Built-in tools for caching
  • Simplified syntax facilities 

Falcon

Falcon is a lightweight micro-framework that focuses on developing swift web APIs and application backends. 

Developers use this framework to design and develop web APIs quickly, create web apps with a clean design and improve existing HTTP and REST architectures. Additionally, Falcon has no restrictions on choosing libraries for a variety of project scenarios and requirements, which make this framework a great choice for Python professionals. 

The big players like PayPal, LinkedIn, OpenStack, and other companies choose Falcon for its speed, reliability, stability, and accuracy.

Key features:

  • Extendable & optimized codebase 
  • Simple API modeling through centralized RESTful routing
  • DRY request processing 
  • WSGI helpers and mocks 
  • Idiomatic HTTP error responses
  • 20% bigger speed with Cython support

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CherryPy

Known as one of the oldest micro-frameworks on the market, CherryPy proves to be an exceptionally fast and stable web application framework that runs on any OS and has its own integrated multi-threaded web server. 

CherryPy is an open-source and object-oriented framework that comes with controller modules and a setup framework making data access, file uploads, templating engines, and handling of sessions easier. This allows programmers to quickly develop a smaller source code to form a reliable database. 

All major web applications that were developed using this framework can easily work on macOS, Windows, Unix, and Linux.

Key features: 

  • Great configuration system
  • Embedded tools for caching, encoding & authentication
  • Simultaneous running of multiple HTTP servers
  • Flexible plugin system
  • Fast development time

Dash

Dash is an open-source micro-framework written on top of Flask for web-server functionality and designed solely for developing and building analytical web applications. 

Dash’s extensive library which focuses mainly on the development of data-driven applications, makes it a perfect choice for data scientists who don’t have much experience in web development.

Applications built using Dash can also be used to run web servers like Flask and then facilitate the communication with JSON packets through HTTP requests. The easy interface makes it suitable to create value property UI controls like drop downs, graphs, and sliders.

Additionally, Dash offers a wide variety of database customization options to make building Python applications and dashboards easier and hassle-free. 

Despite being a relatively young framework, Dash is used by 10% of Fortune 500 Companies.

Key features:

  • URL routing functionality
  • Basic UI Low Demand for Boilerplate Code
  • LDAP integration functionality
  • Plugin support
  • Simple UI
  • Design flexibility
  • Many customization options

Ray

If you plan to develop or scale an application and make use of machine learning, then Ray framework may be the perfect solution. Ray is a fast, easy-to-compute, open-source Python framework accessible to all engineers worldwide. 

Ray is extremely helpful in creating RESTful APIs and running distributed applications. It safeguards HTTP methods with shields and can run Python functions spread across multiple machines. Additionally, this framework is fully packed with a range of libraries such as Tune, Train, and RLib that advance the development of deep learning and accelerates the ML workloads. 

Key features:

  • Query string support
  • Minimal invasive and intuitive API
  • Handling machine failures
  • Handling large objects and numerical sets of data

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Quixote

Known as one of the highly-efficient Python frameworks, Quixote is an open-source, scalable micro-framework that enables the development of web-based applications with maximum accuracy and efficiency. 

Key features:

  • Uses WSGI libraries
  • Supports Jinja 2 Templates
  • Allows traditional web development techniques

Webcore

Smaller than its competitors, Webcore is a lightweight micro-framework that illustrates more than ten years of experience in the field of web development.

Webcore is incredibly easy to use with fewer than 400 code lines, allowing developers to quickly program and separate model, view, and controller. 

Key features: 

  • Easy to install
  • Standard Python WSGI
  • Highly adaptable
  • Developer’s friendly
  • Rely on the Webob package

Top Asynchronous Python frameworks 

Tornado

Tornado is an open-source web framework and asynchronous networking library tool used for building high-performance and high concurrent user amount applications. 

Being extremely versatile, this framework can scale to 10,000+ open connections, making it an excellent choice for WebSockets, web applications, and long polling systems which require a long-lasting link for every user.

Unlike most Python web frameworks, it’s not based on WSGI and runs with only one thread per process. Additionally, it has an integrated HTTP server which enables the application to be served.

Key features:

  • Extensive support for localization and translation.
  • Availability of web templating techniques.
  • Real-time services
  • Non-blocking HTTP client
  • Web templating

FastAPI

Among Python's most popular and quickest testing frameworks, FastAPI is a high-performance web framework designed for creating RestAPIs. 

FastAPI assists in data type validation even when this data is nested under JSON requests. Additionally, it plays an important role in the accumulation of different requests such as Pydantic, OpenAPI, Starlette, and JSON Schema. 

Giants like Microsoft, Netflix, and Uber use FastAPI for its quick development, higher performance, and fewer bugs.

Key features:

  • Easy development of GraphQL API using graphene-python
  • Seamless integration with OAuth 2.0 
  • Automatic & interactive documentation
  • Offers initial testing to mitigate errors by up to 40%
  • Reduces code duplication

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Sanic

Sanic is an open-source asynchronous Python framework designed to build and run web-based applications much faster. 

One of the main benefits of this framework is that it uses asynchronous request handling to provide rapid HTTP responses. It also enables the Async and Awaits routines in Python 3.5. This compatibility allows Sanic to provide non-blocking capabilities and increased coding speed in software development.

Instead of being a lightweight Python framework, this web framework acts as a very powerful tool for building REST APIs. It is fast and flexible. However, it needs to be installed in the Python environment first.

Key features:

  • Plugin support
  • Class-based views 
  • Ability to write and read cookies
  • Various types of logging like error logs 
  • Intuitive API design & built-in fast webserver
  • Supports web development using ASGI 

Vibora

Among the most popular Python asynchronous frameworks ever, Vibora is a Python 3.6+ HTTP client framework built for enhancing productivity.

Known as a fast and straightforward framework, Vibora blends various libraries, including Jinja2, Marshmallow, and WebSockets, and contends to be a lot faster than the usual frameworks (twice as fast as Sanic). 

Key features: 

  • Auto Reloading
  • HTTP2 Support
  • Brotli support (server/client)
  • Cython compiled templates
  • Cython compiled user-routes

AIOHTTP

AIOHTTP is a popular asynchronous Python framework that can serve as a client-side framework apart from being the server web framework. Based on Python 3.5+ features like Async and Awaits, this framework uses the Asyncio library. 

One of the primary benefits of AIOHTTP is that it includes a router and a request object for changing the direction of queries to functions. The software support and signals allow a more efficient build of web applications.

Key features:

  • Supports HTTP servers
  • Web servers of pluggable routing and middleware
  • Provides support for both server and client-based WebSockets

Growler

Similar to AIOHTTP, Growler is an asynchronous Python framework built on the Asyncio library that makes complex app development easy. 

Based on the NodeJS and Express frameworks, Object Relational Mapping (ORM), and templating, Growler is not like other Python frameworks as long as it handles the request by passing it through middleware technology.

Key features:

  • Use of decorators to write reusable code
  • Availability of Ziapp model 
  • Support for a wide range of open-source packages

Muffin

Muffin is a fast and lightweight ASGI (Asynchronous Server Gateway Interface) web framework that is built using the Asyncio module of Python 3.4+ library. 

It is a newly developed Python framework that covers Flask with URL routes. Muffin framework is fast and straightforward, which makes it perfect for small web applications.

Key features: 

  • Supports URL routes
  • Uses PeeWee ORM
  • Compatible with ASGI
  • Supports Asyncio, Trio & Curio Python libraries
  • Handling WebSockets & Server-side events 

Summing up 

It has been estimated that there are more than 260 Python frameworks available on the market. So, which is the best framework for you?

Choosing a Python framework depends on the project requirements and the developer’s experience within the framework. To begin with is to clearly define your goals, project scope, and human resources available. 

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