The fastest Python web framework — built on Django
Rust-powered HTTP, msgspec serialization, full type validation —
with the Django ORM, Django Admin, and every Django package you already use.
Documentation · Quick Start · Features · Benchmarks · Video Tutorial · Discord
Django-Bolt is the fastest Python web framework: 300k+ requests/second on a single 12-core desktop (8 processes, C=100, loopback), ahead of FastAPI and Robyn, and even of Bun-based JavaScript frameworks (Elysia, Hono) on JSON payloads. It is a fully typed API framework for Django. It serves your endpoints from a Rust HTTP server (Actix Web + Tokio), bridges to your Python handlers with PyO3, and serializes with msgspec — while everything you love about Django (ORM, Admin, auth, middleware, signals, third-party apps) keeps working out of the box.
Think Django REST Framework or Django Ninja, with a Rust engine underneath and no gunicorn or uvicorn required.
from django_bolt import BoltAPI
api = BoltAPI()
@api.get("/hello/{name}")
async def hello(name: str):
return {"message": f"Hello, {name}!"}
python manage.py runbolt --dev
✨ Why Django-Bolt?
| ⚡ Rust speed, Python ergonomics | HTTP parsing, routing, auth, guards, CORS, rate limiting, and compression run in Rust without touching the GIL. Your handlers stay plain Python. |
| 🐍 100% Django | Use your existing models, settings.py, INSTALLED_APPS, Django Admin, middleware, and signals. Migrate one endpoint at a time from DRF. |
| 🧷 Fully typed | Type hints drive path/query/header/cookie/form/body extraction and validation. msgspec.Struct and Bolt Serializer return types are validated on the way out. |
| 🚀 Deploy directly | runbolt is the production server: multi-process with SO_REUSEPORT, worker recycling, graceful shutdown, static & media serving. |
| 📚 Batteries included | OpenAPI docs (Swagger, ReDoc, Scalar, RapiDoc, Stoplight), JWT/API-key auth, guards, pagination, ViewSets, WebSockets, SSE, streaming, testing client, MCP servers. |
🚀 Quick Start
1. Install
pip install django-bolt # or: uv add django-bolt
2. Add to INSTALLED_APPS
# myproject/settings.py
INSTALLED_APPS = [
...,
"django_bolt",
]
3. Write your first endpoint
Create an api.py next to your settings.py (or inside any Django app — Bolt autodiscovers them all):
# myproject/api.py
import msgspec
from django.contrib.auth import get_user_model
from django_bolt import BoltAPI
User = get_user_model()
api = BoltAPI()
class UserSchema(msgspec.Struct):
id: int
username: str
@api.get("/users/{user_id}")
async def get_user(user_id: int) -> UserSchema: # response is type-validated
user = await User.objects.aget(id=user_id) # Django ORM, no extra setup
return {"id": user.id, "username": user.username}
4. Run
python manage.py runbolt --dev # auto-reload for development
python manage.py runbolt --processes 4 # production: multi-process, no gunicorn/uvicorn
Your API is live at http://localhost:8000/users/1 and interactive docs at http://localhost:8000/docs.
📖 Next: the Quick Start guide → Deployment → Topic guides.
🧭 A tour of the API
Request validation with type hints
import msgspec
from typing import Annotated
from django_bolt import BoltAPI
from django_bolt.param_functions import Header
api = BoltAPI()
class CreateUser(msgspec.Struct):
username: str
email: str
@api.post("/users", status_code=201)
async def create_user(
user: CreateUser, # JSON body → validated struct
api_key: Annotated[str, Header("x-api-key")], # header
page: int = 1, # query param with default
):
return {"username": user.username, "page": page}
Authentication & guards (evaluated in Rust)
from django_bolt.auth import JWTAuthentication, IsAuthenticated, Requires
IsStaff = Requires("is_staff", True)
@api.get("/admin/stats", auth=[JWTAuthentication()], guards=[IsAuthenticated(), IsStaff])
async def admin_stats(request):
return {"user_id": request.user.id}
JWT signature checks, expiry, API-key lookup, and guard evaluation all happen before the GIL is ever taken.
Serializers & ModelViewSet
from django_bolt import ModelViewSet, PageNumberPagination
from django_bolt.serializers import Serializer
from myapp.models import Article
class ArticleSchema(Serializer):
id: int
title: str
content: str
class Config:
field_sets = {"list": ["id", "title"]}
@api.viewset("/articles")
class ArticleViewSet(ModelViewSet):
queryset = Article.objects.all()
serializer_class = ArticleSchema
pagination_class = PageNumberPagination
One Serializer class, many projections — no more UserListSerializer / UserDetailSerializer / UserAdminSerializer sprawl.
WebSockets & Server-Sent Events
from django_bolt import WebSocket, StreamingResponse
@api.websocket("/ws/echo")
async def echo(websocket: WebSocket):
await websocket.accept()
async for message in websocket.iter_text():
await websocket.send_text(f"Echo: {message}")
@api.get("/events")
async def events():
async def stream():
for i in range(10):
yield f"data: tick {i}\n\n"
return StreamingResponse(stream(), media_type="text/event-stream")
MCP servers for LLM clients
from bolt_mcp import MCP # pip install "django-bolt[mcp]"
mcp = MCP("my-server")
@mcp.tool
async def add(a: int, b: int) -> dict:
return {"sum": a + b}
api.mount_mcp(mcp)
Expose tools, resources, and prompts over MCP Streamable HTTP, backed by the official Rust SDK.
Middleware: CORS, rate limiting, compression
from django_bolt.middleware import cors, rate_limit
@api.get("/public")
@cors(origins=["https://example.com"])
@rate_limit(rps=100, burst=200)
async def public():
return {"ok": True}
Django middleware (sessions, messages, CSRF, your own) is supported too.
📦 Features
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| ⚡ High Performance | Actix Web + Tokio + PyO3, zero-copy routing, sync-dispatch bypass for simple handlers |
| 🔐 Authentication | JWT, API key, and Django session auth — validated in Rust |
| 🛡️ Permissions & Guards | IsAuthenticated, AllowAny, and claim-based Requires(...) guards |
| 🎛️ Middleware | CORS, rate limiting, compression, Django middleware integration |
| 📦 Serializers | msgspec-based validation with field sets, computed fields, and model integration |
| 🗄️ Async ORM | Return QuerySets from async handlers; bounded, vendor-aware ORM executor |
| 📡 Responses | JSON, HTML, redirects, files, streaming, SSE |
| 🔌 WebSockets | FastAPI-style WebSocket handlers on Rust infrastructure |
| 📚 OpenAPI | Auto-generated schema with Swagger, ReDoc, Scalar, RapiDoc, and Stoplight UIs |
| 🧱 Class-Based Views | APIView, ViewSet, ModelViewSet, @action |
| 📄 Pagination | PageNumber, LimitOffset, and Cursor pagination |
| 💉 Dependency Injection | Depends(...) with registration-time graph resolution |
| 🤖 MCP Servers | Tools, resources, prompts, and streaming over MCP Streamable HTTP |
| 🗂️ Static & Media Files | Native Rust static/media serving — no WhiteNoise needed |
| 🔗 ASGI Mounts | Mount existing ASGI apps under a prefix |
| 🩺 Health, Logging, Lifespan | Health endpoints, structured logging, lifespan hooks, signals |
| 🧪 Testing | In-process TestClient that runs the full Rust pipeline |
| 🧬 Nanodjango | Single-file Django apps |
All runtime settings and environment variables are listed in the Settings reference.
📊 Benchmarks
Measured with bombardier on a single 12-core desktop (Ryzen 5 5600G), loopback, C=100, N=100000, 8 processes × 1 worker (runbolt --processes 8). Absolute numbers are hardware-specific; run just save-bench to reproduce on your machine. Full results: python/benchmark/BENCHMARK.md.
| Endpoint | Requests/sec | p99 latency |
|---|---|---|
Root JSON ({"message": ...}) |
~311,000 | 2.2 ms |
Path + query params (/items/1?q=hello) |
~264,000 | — |
PUT JSON body (/items/1) |
~257,000 | — |
| JSON parse + validate (POST) | ~251,000 | — |
| Form data (POST) | ~218,000 | — |
| 10 KB JSON response | ~187,000 | 2.2 ms |
| File upload (multipart) | ~178,000 | — |
| JWT-authenticated (no DB) | ~160,000 | — |
| Static 1 KB asset | ~159,000 | — |
| ORM list, 10 rows (SQLite, async) | ~21,000–27,000 | — |
Server-Sent Events, 10,000 concurrent clients for 60 s: 9,489 msg/s, 100% connections succeeded, ~236 MB RSS, 11.9% average CPU.
Against JavaScript runtimes
The same JSON payloads served by Django-Bolt, Elysia (Bun), and Hono (Bun & Node), 8 processes each:
| Payload | Django-Bolt | Elysia / Bun | Hono / Bun | Hono / Node |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 KB JSON | 251k | 264k | 210k | 97k |
| 10 KB JSON | 157k | 124k | 111k | 79k |
Why so fast?
- Actix Web + Tokio handle HTTP parsing and responses; matchit routes with zero-copy path matching.
- Auth, guards, CORS, rate limiting, compression run in Rust — no GIL, no Python per-request overhead.
- msgspec serialization is 5–10× faster than the standard library; response bodies cross to Rust zero-copy.
- Sync-dispatch bypass: handlers that don't actually await are detected at registration and skip the async bridge entirely.
- Registration-time precomputation: parameter extraction, dependency graphs, and middleware are compiled once, reused forever.
🏗️ How it works
HTTP request
│
▼
Actix Web (Rust) ── routing (matchit) ── CORS · rate limit · compression
│
▼
Auth & guards (Rust, no GIL) ── JWT / API key / session · IsAuthenticated · Requires(...)
│
▼
Dispatch ── sync fast path (single GIL block) or async path (persistent worker loop)
│
▼
Your handler ── typed params · Depends(...) · Django ORM
│
▼
msgspec serialization ── zero-copy body ── HTTP response
🚢 Deployment
python manage.py runbolt --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8000 --processes 4
python manage.py runbolt --processes 4 --max-rss 512 # recycle workers above 512 MB
Multi-process scaling uses SO_REUSEPORT for kernel-level load balancing. Worker recycling, crash respawn, graceful shutdown, and WebSocket drain are built in. See the Deployment guide for systemd, supervisor, and reverse-proxy setups.
🤝 Contributing
Contributions are welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md for the development setup (Rust toolchain, uv, just), the test workflow, and pull request guidelines.
git clone https://github.com/dj-bolt/django-bolt.git && cd django-bolt
uv sync && just build && just test-py
💬 Community
- 📖 Documentation
- 💬 Discord
- 🐛 Issues
- 🎥 Video walkthrough by BugBytes
- 🤖 Ask DeepWiki · for AI assistants: llms.txt
- ❓ FAQ · Comparison vs Ninja / DRF / FastAPI / Litestar · How it works
💖 Sponsors
Support Django-Bolt's development by becoming a sponsor. Your logo will appear here with a link to your website.
Backers
🙏 Acknowledgments
Django-Bolt stands on the shoulders of giants:
- Django REST Framework — ViewSet patterns, permission system, and overall API philosophy
- FastAPI — dependency injection, parameter extraction, and type-hint-driven design
- Litestar — OpenAPI plugin architecture, middleware and guard design
- Robyn — proved the potential of Rust-powered Python web frameworks with PyO3
- Actix Web, PyO3, msgspec, matchit — the foundations that make the speed possible
📄 License
Django-Bolt is released under the MIT License.
1 maintainer
Release files for django-bolt 0.10.3
For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.
Source distribution (sdist)
| File | Size | Uploaded | |
|---|---|---|---|
| django_bolt-0.10.3.tar.gz | 1.6 MB | Details |
Built distributions (wheels)
| File | Reset | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| django_bolt-0.10.3-cp312-abi3-win_amd64.whl | CPython 3.12 | abi3 | Windows x86-64 | Details |
| django_bolt-0.10.3-cp312-abi3-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl | CPython 3.12 | abi3 | Linux glibc 2.17+ x86-64 | Details |
| django_bolt-0.10.3-cp312-abi3-manylinux_2_17_aarch64.manylinux2014_aarch64.whl | CPython 3.12 | abi3 | Linux glibc 2.17+ ARM64 | Details |
| django_bolt-0.10.3-cp312-abi3-macosx_10_12_x86_64.macosx_11_0_arm64.macosx_10_12_universal2.whl | CPython 3.12 | abi3 | macOS 10.12+ universal2 (ARM64, x86-64), macOS 11.0+ ARM64, macOS 10.12+ x86-64 | Details |
Total release size: 27.9 MB
Release files / django_bolt-0.10.3.tar.gz
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| Tags | Source |
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Release files / django_bolt-0.10.3-cp312-abi3-win_amd64.whl
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Release files / django_bolt-0.10.3-cp312-abi3-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl
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| Tags | CPython 3.12 abi3 macOS 10.12+ universal2 (ARM64, x86-64) macOS 10.12+ x86-64 macOS 11.0+ ARM64 |
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