Contents
1. Web Frameworks for Python
A Web framework is a collection of packages or modules which allow developers to write Web applications (see WebApplications) or services without having to handle such low-level details as protocols, sockets or process/thread management.
The majority of Web frameworks are exclusively server-side technology, although, with the increased prevalence of AJAX, some Web frameworks are beginning to include AJAX code that helps developers with the particularly tricky task of programming (client-side) the user's browser. At the extreme end of the client-side Web Frameworks is technology that can use the web browser as a full-blown application execution environment (a la gmail for example): see Web Browser Programming for details.
As a developer using a framework, you typically write code which conforms to some kind of conventions that lets you "plug in" to the framework, delegating responsibility for the communications, infrastructure and low-level stuff to the framework while concentrating on the logic of the application in your own code. This "plugging in" aspect of Web development is often seen as being in opposition to the classical distinction between programs and libraries, and the notion of a "mainloop" dispatching events to application code is very similar to that found in GUI programming.
Generally, frameworks provide support for a number of activities such as interpreting requests (getting form parameters, handling cookies and sessions), producing responses (presenting data as HTML or in other formats), storing data persistently, and so on. Since a non-trivial Web application will require a number of different kinds of abstractions, often stacked upon each other, those frameworks which attempt to provide a complete solution for applications are often known as full-stack frameworks in that they attempt to supply components for each layer in the stack.
Many frameworks now provide an element of customization in their support for the above activities and abstractions, utilizing components in that they provide abstractions only for certain specific things. As a result, it can be possible for you to build your own full-stack framework almost entirely from existing components.
1.1. Popular Full-Stack Frameworks
A web application may use a combination of a base HTTP application server, a storage mechanism such as a database, a template engine, a request dispatcher, an authentication module and an AJAX toolkit. These can be individual components or be provided together in a high-level framework.
These are the most popular high-level frameworks. Many of them include components listed on the WebComponents page.
Name |
Latest version |
Latest update date |
description |
5.2 |
2025-04-02 |
The Web framework for perfectionists (with deadlines). Django makes it easier to build better Web apps more quickly and with less code. Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design. It lets you build high-performing, elegant Web applications quickly. Django focuses on automating as much as possible and adhering to the DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) principle. The last release supporting Python 2.7 is 1.11 LTS. See Django |
|
0.7.9 |
2025-04-29 |
Reflex is the open-source framework empowering Python developers to build web apps faster. Build both your frontend and backend in a single language, Python (pip install reflex), with no JavaScript or web development experience required. Build anything from internal data and AI apps to large public-facing web apps and deploy with a single command (reflex deploy). Reflex provides high-level UI components, easy deployment and AI agents to create, edit, and deploy apps 10x faster than traditional web development while also remaining extensible through custom components that can fully leverage JavaScript's expressivity. |
|
4.20.3 |
2025-03-02 |
Masonite is the developer focused dev tool with all the features you need for the rapid development you deserve. Masonite is perfect for beginners getting their first web app deployed or advanced developers and businesses that need to reach for the full fleet of features available. Masonite works hard to be fast and easy from install to deployment so developers can go from concept to creation in as quick and efficiently as possible. Use it for your next SaaS! Try it once and you’ll fall in love. |
|
2.4.3 |
2020-03-01 |
the rapid Web development webframework you've been looking for. Combines SQLAlchemy (Model) or the Tutorials |
|
2.27.1 |
2023-11-16 |
* Python 2.7, Python 3.5+, PyPy * All in one package with no further dependencies. Development, deployment, debugging, testing, database administration and maintenance of applications can be done via the provided web interface, but not required. * web2py has no configuration files, requires no installation, can be run off a USB drive. * web2py uses Python for the Model, View and the Controller * Built-in ticketing system to manage errors * Internationalization engine and pluralization, caching system * Flexible authentication system (LDAP, MySQL, janrain etc) * NIX(Linux, BSD), Windows, Mac OSX, tested on EC2, Webfaction * works with MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite , Firebird, Oracle, MSSQL and the Google App Engine via an ORM abstraction layer. * Includes libraries to handle HTML/XML, RSS, ATOM, CSV, RTF, JSON, AJAX, XMLRPC, WIKI markup. * Production ready, capable of upload/download of very large files * Emphasis on backward compatibility. Note: official docs state that this is not recommended for new projects, consider using py4web (a.k.a. web3py) instead. |
See below for some other arguably less popular full-stack frameworks!
1.2. Other Full-Stack Frameworks
These frameworks also provide most, if not all of the technology stack. However, they are regarded as not being as popular as the frameworks listed above.
Name |
Latest version |
Latest update date |
description |
4.10.0 |
2025-04-09 |
a semantic web application framework featuring a query language, a selection+view mechanism, multiple databases, security, workflows, reusable components, etc. |
|
3.0.4 |
2025-04-24 |
Dash is the most downloaded, trusted framework for building ML & data science web apps. |
|
1.4 |
2021-11-02 |
Scalable and heterogeneous web toolkit sitting on top of Django and others. Django-hotsauce is a pragmatic fork of Django 1.x API to develop scalable and extensible WSGI applications in Python 3. |
|
6.0 |
2025-04-17 |
built on the existing Zope 3 libraries, but aims to provide an easier learning curve and a more agile development experience. It does this by placing an emphasis on convention over configuration and DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself). |
|
7.0.53 |
2025-04-08 |
Jam.py primary goal is to allow development of database-driven business web applications easily and quickly, based on DRY (another "Don't Repeat Yourself") principle, with emphasis on CRUD. Jam.py has no configuration files, requires no installation other than pip or unzip, can be run as a portable App. |
|
1.0.3 |
2018-01-12 |
a lightweight Web framework emphasizing flexibility and rapid development. It combines the very best ideas from the worlds of Ruby, Python and Perl, providing a structured but extremely flexible Python Web framework. It was also one of the first projects to leverage the emerging WSGI standard, which allows extensive re-use and flexibility but only if you need it. Out of the box, Pylons aims to make Web development fast, flexible and easy. Pylons is built on top of Paste (see below). NOTE: Pylons the web framework is in maintenance-only status after merging with Pyramid to form the Pylons Project to develop web technologies using Python. |
|
7.0.3 |
2024-03-07 |
With Reahl, programming is done purely in Python, using concepts familiar from GUI programming - like reusable Widgets and Events. |
|
3.1.0 |
2024-09-11 |
Simian is a full-stack development framework combined with a deployment portal. Simian Portal serves as the central hub for managing and deploying your Simian Web Apps to end-users, offering authentication and authorization functionalities. Additionally, Simian supports web apps implemented in Julia and MATLAB, alongside Python. |
|
1.0a13 |
2019-06-26 |
A full stack Python framework for building consumer and business web applications. Websauna builds upon Pyramid, SQLAlchemy, and other mature open source components. Jupyter Notebook is directly integrated to Websauna. Analyzing website data and building interactive visualizations is within a reach of one click. Websauna needs Python 3.5.2 or newer. |
|
3.2.0 |
2023-07-28 |
A lightweight, model update/validation, dependency, xsrf/resubmission protection, AJAX+JSON, i18n (gettext), middlewares, and more. Template engine agnostic (integration with: jinja2, mako, tenjin and html widgets. |
|
5.13 |
2025-03-13 |
Being the grandaddy of Python web frameworks, Zope has grown into a family of frameworks over the years. Zope 1 was released in 1999. Zope 2 is both a web framework and a general purpose application server, today it is primarily used by ContentManagementSystems. Zope 3 is both a standalone framework and a collection of related libraries, which are also included with newer releases of Zope 2. All of the Zope frameworks include the ZODB, an object database for Python. |
|
4.1.2 |
2019-09-19 |
watson-framework (3.5.4 Released 2019-10-07, initial release 2012-11-26) A component based WSGI web framework giving you the tools needed to build your web apps quickly and easily:
- Requires Python 3.3+.
- MVC based architecture
- Dependency injection
- Event driven
Werkzeug (3.1.3 Released 2024-11-08) is Unicode-aware, includes a powerful debugger, full featured request and response objects, HTTP utilities to handle entity tags, cache control headers, HTTP dates, cookie handling, file uploads, a powerful URL routing system and a bunch of community contributed addon modules.
1.3. Popular Non Full-Stack Frameworks
These projects provide the base "application server", either running as its own independent process, upon Apache or in other environments. On many of these you can then introduce your own choice of templating engines and other components to run on top, although some may provide technologies for parts of the technology stack.
Name and home page |
PyPI |
Latest release |
Latest update date |
Description |
3.11.18 |
2025-04-21 |
Async http client/server framework |
||
0.13.3 |
2025-04-21 |
a fast and simple micro-framework for small web-applications. It offers request dispatching (Routes) with url parameter support, Templates, key/value Databases, a build-in HTTP Server and adapters for many third party WSGI/HTTP-server and template engines. All in a single file and with no dependencies other than the Python Standard Library. |
||
18.10.0 |
2024-06-14 |
a Pythonic, object-oriented HTTP framework. CherryPy powered web applications are in fact stand-alone Python applications embedding their own multi-threaded web server. TurboGears, web2py (see above) also use CherryPy. |
||
4.0.2 |
2024-11-06 |
- lightweight, API-oriented framework designed to be fast. Falcon powers the popular Hug web framework. Supports Python 2.7 and 3. |
||
0.115.12 |
2025-03-24 |
a modern, fast (high-performance), web framework for building APIs with Python 3.6+ based on standard Python type hints. |
||
3.1.0 |
2024-11-13 |
“a microframework for Python based on Werkzeug, Jinja 2 and good intentions.” Includes a built-in development server, unit tesing support, and is fully Unicode-enabled with RESTful request dispatching and WSGI compliance. |
||
2.6.1 |
2020-02-06 |
Embrace the APIs of the future. Hug aims to make developing APIs as simple as possible, but no simpler. It's one of the first fully future looking frameworks: only supporting Python3+. |
||
2.0.2 |
2023-08-25 |
a small, fast, down-to-earth, open source Python web development framework. It makes real-world web application development and deployment more fun, more predictable, and more productive. Pyramid is a Pylons Project, and is the successor to the Pylons web framework. |
||
0.20.0 |
2024-12-23 |
a Python web microframework based on Asyncio. It is intended to provide the easiest way to use the asyncio functionality in a web context, especially with existing Flask apps. This is possible as Quart has the same API as Flask. |
1.4. Other Non Full-Stack Frameworks
Albatross (1.42 Released 2011-04-27) a small and flexible Python toolkit for developing highly stateful Web applications; deploys to CGI, FastCGI, and ModPython servers.
Aquarium (2.3 Released 2007-01-01) offers convenient libraries, tight integration with Cheetah, adaptors for various Web environments; deploys to CGI, FastCGI, and ModPython servers.
circuits (3.2.3 Released 2024-04-04) is a component based, event-driven light weight and high performance HTTP/WSGI framework. circuits has some similar features to CherryPy (see above), such as CherryPy's URL mapping. circuits applications are stand-alone applications with a high performance, multi-process web server with great concurrent scalability with full support for WSGI and deployment with other web servers.
Divmod Athena) which supports the creation of highly dynamic Web pages in a structured manner.
MorePath (0.19 released 2020-01-30) Morepath is a Python web microframework, with super powers. It uses routing, but the routing is to models. Morepath is model-driven and flexible, which makes it expressive.
Spinne (1.0.1 Released 2014-05-17) - A simple, easy and fast micro web framework for python 3.x.
WSGIServlets (1.0.1 Released 2011-11-09) - lightweight, object-oriented framework that doesn't get in your way. Intuitive class hierarchy makes coding WSGI applications, middleware or full-blown CMS and frameworks a simple task by providing developers a rich set of tools out-of-the-box. A link to a live tutorial (written with WSGIServlets) is available on the project's homepage. The tutorial is also included in the distribution along with a complete API reference manual.
1.5. Discontinued/Inactive Frameworks
The following frameworks are either discontinued, in that their developers may have stated that they no longer maintain the code, or appear to be inactively developed or maintained, in that the Web site for the project has remained unchanged for an extended period of time.
4Suite (the server product seems to receive relatively infrequent updates and the site is often down)
Enamel - an abstraction layer over Twisted, Nevow, Formal and SQLAlchemy to converge their concepts under a single framework (Link no longer works)
GAE framework - (1.0 PRE, Released 2011-05-84) is a Python web framework that's designed for high-load web sites build on Google App Engine; Note: The project website appears to have been closed down: Karrigell (3.1.1 Released 2010-09-02) is a flexible Python web framework, with a clear and intuitive syntax. It is independent from any database, ORM or templating engine, and lets the programmer choose between a variety of coding styles. A version for Python3.2+ (4.3.10 Released 2013-05-26) is was available at Python Server Pages, or PSP (old Web site from 1999, dead link)
Wasp (2.00 Released 2007.07) - supports command-line, CGI and embedded web server modes, with templating, session mechanism and other modules emphasizing ease of use and familiar paradigms. (2010-03-15, website indicates that it is no longer active: "I AM SORRY BUT WASP WILL NOT BE RETURNING. I simply have no time for this venture, seeing as how I am working towards my masters..."; 2013-08-13, dead link)
WebBot (0.5.0 Released 2013-04-10) - A QT inspired web framework that includes a graphical interface builder, AJAX abstraction, and integration support for Google's AppEngine.
WebStack (1.2.7 Released 2007-10-29) - very lightweight, requiring layers of extra technology (such as XSLTools and others) to match full-stack frameworks in feature comparisons
WHIFF (1.1 Released 2013-07-09) WHIFF is a collection of support services for WSGI/Python web applications which allows applications to be composed by "dropping" dynamic pages into container directories. It automatically includes support for advanced features such as AJAX, jQueryUI widgets, Flash based charts and more. Extensive documentation and tutorial essays.
1.6. Books and Articles
Steve Holden wrote a book on Core Python Programming by Wesley Chun -- there is also a small section elsewhere on Web APIs.
The Zope 3 Quick Start Guide gives a short introduction to Zope 3.
1.7. Content Management Systems
Content management systems (CMS) often allow you to build applications like functionality upon them and typically provide many of the facilities seen in full-stack frameworks. See ContentManagementSystems for more details.
1.8. Web Components
Some frameworks promote interoperable components for things like templating/output and authentication/authorization, and so you might see users of different frameworks actually using the same component or library. See WebComponents for details of such components.
1.9. Web Client Frameworks
In contrast to server-oriented frameworks which may offer AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and XML) support by serving pre-packaged (inflexible and highly specific but otherwise very useful) JavaScript components, and offering server-side support for requests made by such JavaScript components, Web client frameworks take more direct advantage of the dynamic capabilities of browser engines. Ways in which the full potential of browser engines can be realized are, for example, by compiling Python code into JavaScript or by embedding a Python interpreter into the Web browser itself. In some cases, Web browser engines can be run within separate customized applications rather than in a "web browser" per se. See Web Browser Programming for details.
1.10. See Also
More information on python web frameworks can be found here:
Other related wiki pages:
1.11. Editorial Note
The above lists should be arranged in ascending alphabetical order - please respect this when adding new solutions. When specifying release dates please use the format YYYY-MM-DD.
Some special notes to contributors to this page who like to assume an advocacy position when "reorganizing" the content:
Do not remove editorial guidelines: when people do this it not only indicates that they do not care about such guidelines, but it also leads others to believe that the page never had any structure or purpose.
If you must change the categories used on this page, at least attempt to assign all frameworks to meaningful categories. Do not invent special categories in order to elevate the profile of certain projects. Do not merge categories and put frameworks into a miscellaneous category.
Do not add links to projects unless they are Web frameworks. Instead, use the WebComponents, WebServers, Templating pages, or any page referenced by WebProgramming.
Some frameworks are not actively developed or maintained. Do not just move entries into the "Discontinued/Inactive Frameworks" section without at least doing some investigation first.
Popular is a bit of an arbitrary classification. For something to be considered popular a good guideline would be that it is in the top 4000 packages as per Top PyPI Packages.
And some basic editing advice: use the preview button when making edits, rather than leaving tens of micro-changes in the history.