Python shines in latest web framework ‘shootout’

Seth Davis posted the results of his latest ‘web framework shootout’ this weekend, and the news is good for Python, with Bottle 0.9.6 and Pyramid 1.2 both ranking highly. Davis used three benchmark pages: a simple “Hello World” test, a more complex template with ‘Lorem Ipsum’ filler text and a template test with a database query. Bottle, a deliberately lightweight framework, came out far ahead of the competition in both of the template-based tests and second in the “Hello World” test, while Pyramid performed better than any other ‘full stack(ish)’ framework in all three of the benchmarks.

Davis cautions readers not to rely on the tests results too heavily, emphasising that, “[w]hile I have tried to perform each test as fairly and accurately as possible, it would be foolish to consider these results as scientific in any way.” He also adds a disclaimer about methodology:

It should also be noted that my goal here was not necessarily to figure out how fast each framework could perform at its most optimized configuration (although built-in caching and other performance tweaks were usually enabled if the default configuration permitted it), but rather to see what a minimal “out-of-the-box” experience would look like.

Even with these caveats, the results make for interesting reading. Pyramid and Bottle aside, top performers include the ultra-lightweight web.go, written for Google’s compiled Go language, and Flask, perhaps Bottle’s biggest competitor on the Python microframework scene. Django, which is nearing version 1.4, hovers around the middle of all three charts, while behemoths such as Rails and Symfony languish at the back of the pack.

Head over to Davis’s blog to read the full results, or inspect the benchmarks via the shootout’s GitHub repo.