Why Sanic Outperforms Flask: Speed Benchmarks and Quick‑Start Guide

Speed Comparison

Benchmarks show Sanic (Python 3.5 + uvloop) handling 30,601 requests per second at 3.23 ms, outperforming Wheezy (20,244 req/s, 4.94 ms), Falcon (18,972 req/s, 5.27 ms), Bottle (13,596 req/s, 7.36 ms), Flask (4,988 req/s, 20.08 ms), Kyoukai (3,889 req/s, 27.44 ms) and Aiohttp (2,979 req/s, 33.42 ms).

Installation

Requires Python 3.5+. Install with:

python -m pip install sanic

Hello World

Create main.py with:

from sanic import Sanic
from sanic.response import json

app = Sanic(__name__)

@app.route("/")
async def test(request):
    return json({"hello": "world"})

app.run(host="0.0.0.0", port=8000)

Run with python3 main.py.

Request Object

Key attributes: request.files (uploaded files), request.json, request.args, request.form.

Examples

from sanic import Sanic
from sanic.response import json

@app.route("/json")
async def post_json(request):
    return json({"received": True, "message": request.json})

@app.route("/form")
async def post_form(request):
    return json({"received": True, "form_data": request.form, "test": request.form.get('test')})

@app.route("/files")
async def upload(request):
    test_file = request.files.get('test')
    file_parameters = {
        "body": test_file.body,
        "name": test_file.name,
        "type": test_file.type,
    }
    return json({"received": True, "file_names": list(request.files.keys()), "test_file_parameters": file_parameters})

@app.route("/query_string")
async def query_string(request):
    return json({"parsed": True, "args": request.args, "url": request.url, "query_string": request.query_string})

Routing

Similar to Flask, routes can capture variables:

@app.route('/tag/<tag>/')
async def tag_handler(request, tag):
    return text(f'Tag - {tag}')

@app.route('/number/<integer_arg>/')
async def int_handler(request, integer_arg):
    return text(f'Integer - {integer_arg}')

Middleware Registration

@app.middleware('request')
async def request_middleware(request):
    print("I am a spy")

@app.middleware('response')
async def response_middleware(request, response):
    return text('I halted the response')

Exception Handling

from sanic.exceptions import ServerError

@app.route('/killme')
def kill(request):
    raise ServerError("Something bad happened")

Blueprints

Blueprints organize large projects, similar to Flask blueprints:

from sanic import Blueprint
from sanic.response import json

bp = Blueprint('my_blueprint')

@bp.route('/')
async def bp_root():
    return json({'my': 'blueprint'})

Register with app.register_blueprint(bp) and run the app.

Conclusion

Sanic leverages Python 3.5+ async features and uvloop to deliver high‑performance web services, making it a strong alternative to Flask.