Django REST Framework
Shares rank 40 of 63 web frameworks by recommenders
People recommend it for building REST APIs on Django quickly and productively. The most common caveat is that its serializers feel too abstract to some developers.
People recommend it for building REST APIs on Django quickly and productively. The most common caveat is that its serializers feel too abstract to some developers.
10 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 7
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 70%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 7 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 2.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Works well for APIs and SPAs
“Django with DRF or django-ninja works really nice for that use case.”
Comment from 28 Jan 2026 in “Notes on Starting to Use Django” “I use Django + DRF for SPA.”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “Django 6”
Other web frameworks people recommend
The four most recommended other web frameworks, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ruby on Rails | 337 | 145 | 70% | 12 | 14 yrs38 owners | Approved |
| Django | 277 | 97 | 74% | 12 | 15 yrs38 owners | Approved |
| Next.js | 127 | 256 | 33% | 12 | 3 yrs6 owners | — |
| Phoenix Framework | 85 | 11 | 89% | 12 | 8 yrs7 owners | Approved |
| Django REST FrameworkThis page | 7 | 3 | 70% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
All 10 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I use DRF but not serializers and write validations by hand because it is too abstract for me.”
“Use the ORM together with DRF serializers and an OpenApi generator”
“or DRF query and filter the results”
“each had its own flavour of incidental complexity”
“it's very easy to create a poorly performing app by following the established patterns (N+1 queries being a huge problem created by DRF serializers)”
“Django with DRF or django-ninja works really nice for that use case.”
“precisely because it's so thin, unlike DRF.”
“DRF becomes more of a hindrance”
“I use Django + DRF for SPA.”
“Getting django + rest_framework up and running and actually be productive takes me max 10 minutes”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.