Why Choose Sanic: An Asynchronous Python Web Framework for Production

When developing web applications with Python, the most common choices are Flask, Django, or Tornado, and many also mention FastAPI. However, with the rise of async/await in Python 3.5+ and the release of Python 3.9.3, developers are encouraged to consider asynchronous frameworks for better performance.

Benchmark data from a GitHub project that tests many web frameworks shows that traditional frameworks like Flask, Django, and Tornado rank near the bottom among Python options, while newer async frameworks perform significantly faster.

Below are the benchmark source codes used for Flask, Django, Tornado, and Sanic:

<code># Disable all logging features
import logging
logging.disable()

from flask import Flask
from meinheld import patch

patch.patch_all()
app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route("/")
def index():
    return ""

@app.route("/user/<int:id>", methods=["GET"])
def user_info(id):
    return str(id)

@app.route("/user", methods=["POST"])
def user():
    return ""
</code>

<code>from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.views.decorators.csrf import csrf_exempt

def index(request):
    return HttpResponse(status=200)

def get_user(request, id):
    return HttpResponse(id)

@csrf_exempt
def create_user(request):
    return HttpResponse(status=200)
</code>

<code># Disable all logging features
import logging
logging.disable()

import tornado.httpserver
import tornado.ioloop
import tornado.web

class MainHandler(tornado.web.RequestHandler):
    def get(self):
        pass

class UserHandler(tornado.web.RequestHandler):
    def post(self):
        pass

class UserInfoHandler(tornado.web.RequestHandler):
    def get(self, id):
        self.write(id)

app = tornado.web.Application([
    (r"/", MainHandler),
    (r"/user", UserHandler),
    (r"/user/(\d+)", UserInfoHandler),
])
</code>

<code># Disable all logging features
import logging
logging.disable()

import multiprocessing
from sanic import Sanic
from sanic.response import text

app = Sanic("benchmark")

@app.route("/")
async def index(request):
    return text("")

@app.route("/user/<id:int>", methods=["GET"]) 
async def user_info(request, id):
    return text(str(id))

@app.route("/user", methods=["POST"]) 
async def user(request):
    return text("")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    workers = multiprocessing.cpu_count()
    app.run(host="0.0.0.0", port=3000, workers=workers, debug=False, access_log=False)
</code>

The benchmark intentionally performs no real work—each endpoint simply returns a response—to place all frameworks on an equal starting line, even though such a test has limited practical meaning.

Sanic emerges as the highlighted asynchronous framework because it combines high speed with a rich ecosystem, extensive third‑party extensions, and official documentation in multiple languages, including Chinese.

Compared to other fast frameworks like Falcon, Sanic offers a more developer‑friendly experience, balancing performance with usability, and benefits from a mature community that maintains forums, Discord, GitHub issues, and other official channels.

Sanic has been production‑ready since at least 2020, with the author reporting personal use from version 19.9 through 21.3, and the framework is designed to run directly in production without requiring external servers like Unicorn.

Documentation for Sanic is comprehensive, with Chinese guides, API references, and ongoing translations into Korean and Portuguese, whereas other frameworks often have fragmented or outdated docs.

The official Sanic community provides official forums, Discord, GitHub, Twitter, and StackOverflow support, ensuring developers can obtain reliable help directly from core contributors.

Overall, the article advocates adopting Sanic for its speed, production readiness, documentation quality, and active community, encouraging readers to try it and benefit from faster development and execution.