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Flask vs Gunicorn: What are the differences?

Flask vs Gunicorn

Flask and Gunicorn are both popular frameworks used in web development, but they have key differences in terms of their functionality and performance.

  1. Deployment Approach: Flask is a micro web framework that is often used as a development server, suitable for small applications or prototypes. On the other hand, Gunicorn is a production-ready WSGI server that is designed to handle heavy traffic and high loads, making it better suited for large-scale applications.

  2. Concurrency Model: Flask runs in a single process, which means it can only handle one request at a time. Gunicorn, on the other hand, uses a pre-fork worker model, allowing it to handle multiple requests concurrently. This makes Gunicorn more efficient in handling simultaneous requests and improves the overall performance of the application.

  3. Scalability: Due to its single process nature, Flask may struggle to handle a high volume of concurrent requests, leading to potential bottlenecks and slower response times. Gunicorn, with its ability to handle multiple requests concurrently, is better equipped to handle scalability and can scale horizontally by adding more worker processes when needed.

  4. Load-balancing: While Flask does not provide built-in load-balancing capabilities, Gunicorn can be easily configured to work with a load balancer like Nginx. This allows requests to be distributed across multiple instances of Gunicorn running on different servers, ensuring better distribution of load and improved performance.

  5. HTTP Server Features: Flask does not include built-in support for handling HTTP server features like HTTP/2, keep-alive connections, and websocket support. In contrast, Gunicorn provides these features out of the box, making it a more suitable choice for applications that require advanced HTTP functionality.

  6. Memory Usage: Flask consumes less memory compared to Gunicorn due to its lightweight design and minimalistic feature set. Gunicorn, being a more robust server, requires more memory to handle its multiple worker processes and additional features.

In summary, Flask is a lightweight micro web framework suitable for small-scale applications, while Gunicorn is a production-ready server that offers better scalability, load-balancing capabilities, and advanced HTTP server features for large-scale applications.

Advice on Flask and Gunicorn
kristan-dev
Senior Solutions Analyst · | 8 upvotes · 372.9K views

My journey to developing REST APIs started with Flask Restful, and I've found it to be enough for the needs of my project back then. Now that I've started investing more time on personal projects, I've yet to decide if I should move to use Django for writing REST APIs. I often see job posts looking for Python+Django developers, but it's usually for full-stack developers. I'm primarily interested in Data Engineering, so most of my web projects are back end.

Should I continue with what I know (Flask) or move on to Django?

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Rafael Torres
Technical Lead at 4Agile · | 9 upvotes · 363K views

If you want to be a Web developer with knowledge in another frontend and NoSql technology, maybe continue with Flask. However, if you want to create very fast solutions to grow up with a new business and merge these with data analysis and other tools, Django is the answer. Basically read more about the service architecture where you feel more comfortable, Microservice or Monolithic, but please will not married with any because they solve issues to different contexts.

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Girish Sharma
Software Engineer at FireVisor Systems · | 6 upvotes · 295.4K views
Needs advice
on
BottleBottleFlaskFlask
and
NamekoNameko

Which is the best Python framework for microservices?

We are using Nameko for building microservices in Python. The things we really like are dependency injection and the ease with which one can expose endpoints via RPC over RabbitMQ. We are planning to try a tool that helps us write polyglot microservices and nameko is not super compatible with it. Also, we are a bit worried about the not so good community support from nameko and looking for a python alternate to write microservices.

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Replies (1)
Recommends
on
BottleBottle

Bottle is much less bloated and fast. Its built-in templating system is one of the fastest as it compiles the templates in bytecode. Also Bottle has no depenencies, preventing dependency bloat.

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Saurav Pandit
Application Devloper at Bny Mellon · | 6 upvotes · 318.2K views

I have just started learning Python 3 weeks ago. I want to create a REST API using python. The API will be used to save form data in an Oracle database. The front end is using AngularJS 8 with Angular Material. In python, there are so many frameworks to develop REST APIs.

I am looking for some suggestions which REST framework to choose?

Here are some features I am looking for:

  • Easy integration and unit testing, like in Angular. We just want to run a command.

  • Code packaging, like in java maven project we can build and package. I am looking for something which I can push in as an artifact and deploy whole code as a package.

  • Support for swagger/ OpenAPI

  • Support for JSON Web Token

  • Support for test case coverage report

Framework can have features included or can be available by extension. Also, you can suggest a framework other than the ones I have mentioned.

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Replies (1)
Recommends
on
FlaskFlask
at

For starters flask provides a beautiful and easy way to create REST APIs. Also its supported by excellent beginner docs as well as a very active community. Another good thing with Flask is its widely available list of plugins which allow you to build as you go. Its also good in performance and can scale to a quite decent level. However, if you are sure your project is going to be fairly big, it would be better to start with Django as it provides a lot of features out of the box and is extremely stable in performance. Both these frameworks have support for Swagger, JWT, Coverage Report although you have to install plugins for them. Deploying both of these are fairly simple and there is huge documentation available. Django has one of the best documentations I have come across. I hope I was able to answer your queries.

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Pros of Flask
Pros of Gunicorn
  • 10
    For it flexibility
  • 9
    Flexibilty and easy to use
  • 8
    Flask
  • 7
    User friendly
  • 6
    Secured
  • 5
    Unopinionated
  • 2
    Secure
  • 1
    Customizable
  • 1
    Simple to use
  • 1
    Powerful
  • 1
    Rapid development
  • 1
    Beautiful code
  • 1
    Easy to develop and maintain applications
  • 1
    Easy to setup and get it going
  • 1
    Easy to use
  • 1
    Documentation
  • 1
    Python
  • 1
    Minimal
  • 1
    Lightweight
  • 1
    Easy to get started
  • 1
    Orm
  • 1
    Not JS
  • 1
    Perfect for small to large projects with superb docs.
  • 1
    Easy to integrate
  • 1
    Speed
  • 1
    Get started quickly
  • 0
    Open source
  • 0
    Well designed
  • 0
    Flexibilty
  • 0
    Productive
  • 0
    Awesome
  • 0
    Expressive
  • 0
    Love it
  • 34
    Python
  • 30
    Easy setup
  • 8
    Reliable
  • 3
    Light
  • 3
    Fast

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Cons of Flask
Cons of Gunicorn
  • 10
    Not JS
  • 7
    Context
  • 5
    Not fast
  • 1
    Don't has many module as in spring
    Be the first to leave a con

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    - No public GitHub repository available -

    What is Flask?

    Flask is intended for getting started very quickly and was developed with best intentions in mind.

    What is Gunicorn?

    Gunicorn is a pre-fork worker model ported from Ruby's Unicorn project. The Gunicorn server is broadly compatible with various web frameworks, simply implemented, light on server resources, and fairly speedy.

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