Litestar: Enterprise-Grade Python ASGI Framework

Quick Answer

Litestar is a powerful, flexible ASGI framework designed for enterprise-grade engineering. Unlike FastAPI’s microframework approach, Litestar provides “batteries-included” features: Class-Based Controllers, hierarchical Dependency Injection, and comprehensive DTO factories. Its use of msgspec for serialization achieves 2x FastAPI throughput, making it ideal for performance-critical applications.

What is Litestar?

Litestar explicitly rejects the “micro” label. While lightweight in resources, its feature set is maximalist, including OpenAPI generation, security primitives, and DTO automation out of the box.

Core Architecture

Class-Based Controllers

from litestar import Controller, get

class UserController(Controller):
    path = "/users"
    
    @get("/")
    async def list_users(self) -> List[User]:
        return await self.service.get_all()

Dependency Injection

from litestar import Provide

async def get_db() -> Database:
    return Database()

@app.get("/users")
async def handler(db: Database = Depends(get_db)):
    return await db.query("SELECT * FROM users")

Litestar vs FastAPI

Feature	Litestar	FastAPI
Architecture	Explicit, Layered, OOP	Implicit, Functional
DI System	Hierarchical Dictionary	Depends()
Validation	Msgspec/Pydantic/Attrs	Pydantic
Performance	2x FastAPI	Baseline

Best Use Cases

Ideal For:

• Enterprise applications
• Large teams requiring structure
• Performance-critical APIs

Avoid For:

• Simple microservices
• Rapid prototyping

Conclusion

Litestar provides the architectural rigor needed for enterprise Python development at scale. Its explicit patterns and performance optimizations make it the strategic choice over FastAPI for large, long-lived applications.

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Last Updated: 2026-01-20