FastAPI in Production: How Big Tech Is Powering APIs with Python’s Fastest Framework

 


🔍 Introduction

In the modern era of microservices, developers need backend frameworks that are fast, reliable, and easy to use. Enter FastAPI — a relatively new Python framework that has taken the backend world by storm. Built on Starlette and Pydantic, FastAPI offers high performance, asynchronous support, and auto-generated docs with Swagger UI.

But is FastAPI just a developer favorite, or is it being used by the tech giants too? Let’s explore who’s using FastAPI in production, why it’s gaining so much popularity, and how it compares to other frameworks.

🚀 What is FastAPI?

FastAPI is a modern, fast (high-performance) web framework for building APIs with Python 3.7+ based on standard Python type hints.

Key features:

  • Asynchronous support (async/await)

  • Automatic interactive API docs

  • Data validation with Pydantic

  • Built-in OAuth2 and JWT support

  • Very fast (comparable to NodeJS & Go)

📊 Popularity of FastAPI

  • FastAPI is among the fastest-growing Python projects on GitHub, with 66K+ stars as of 2025.

  • It consistently ranks in the top 10 Python web frameworks on platforms like GitHub, Stack Overflow, and JetBrains surveys.

✅ Source: GitHub - tiangolo/fastapi

🏢 Companies Using FastAPI in Production

1. Netflix

Netflix uses FastAPI for internal tools and machine learning model deployments where high performance and asynchronous operations are needed.

✅ Source: Official FastAPI Showcase

2. Microsoft

Microsoft uses FastAPI in some of its internal AI and ML tools due to its native async support and fast development cycle.

✅ Source: Microsoft Open Source Projects

3. Uber

Uber’s Ludwig, an open-source ML tool, supports deployment via FastAPI because of its speed and data validation features.

✅ Source: Ludwig Documentation

4. Zulip

Zulip, a powerful team chat platform, uses FastAPI for API performance improvements and modern async capabilities.

✅ Source: Zulip GitHub Discussions

5. Documatic

Documatic, a document search engine funded by Y Combinator, uses FastAPI to handle large API queries and NLP tasks.

✅ Source: FastAPI Twitter

🤖 Why Big Companies Use FastAPI

  • Speed: Faster than Flask and Django (thanks to Starlette).

  • Developer Experience: Built-in docs (Swagger + ReDoc) save dev time.

  • Type-safe: Type hints enable better error checking and editor support.

  • Async-ready: Scales well with high I/O workloads (great for ML, AI, NLP APIs).

  • Validation + Serialization: Automatic with Pydantic.

📌 Should You Learn FastAPI?

If you're:

  • A Python backend developer

  • Working with APIs, ML models, or microservices

  • Building tools that need speed and validation
    👉 FastAPI is a must-learn in 2025.

📚 Resources to Learn FastAPI

✍️ Final Thoughts

FastAPI is not just a trending tool — it’s a production-grade framework used by some of the biggest companies in tech. If you’re already working with Python, learning FastAPI can boost your backend capabilities and open doors to roles in AI, ML, and cloud-based API development.

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