FastAPI vs. Express.js vs. Flask vs. Nest.js Benchmark

I wanted to verify FastAPI’s claims of having performance on par with Node.js. So I decided to conduct a benchmark test. For this, I used wrk, an HTTP benchmarking tool.

I also wanted to test it with a call to an endpoint that makes a call to a PostgreSQL database in order to simulate a more “realistic” scenario. In each case, I created an endpoint that returns one hundred rows of data from the database.

I tested the following combinations:

• FastAPI + psycopg2
• FastAPI + SQLModel
• Flask + psycopg2 + flask run
• Flask + psycopg2 + gunicorn
• Express.js + pg
• Nest.js + Prisma
• Flask + psycopg2 + gunicorn (4 workers)
• FastAPI + psycopg2 + gunicorn (4 workers)
• FastAPI + SQLModel + gunicorn (4 workers)

The code for this test can be found here: https://github.com/travisluong/python-vs-nodejs-benchmark.