Comparing
Async http client/server framework (asyncio)
Distributed task queue for async and scheduled background jobs in Python.
| Metric | aiohttp | celery |
|---|---|---|
| Ecosystem | Python | Python |
| Difficulty | Beginner ✓ | Intermediate |
| Weekly downloads | 0 | 3.2M↑ |
| Latest version | v3.13.5 | v5.4.0 |
| Recipes | 1 | 3↑ |
aiohttp only
Shared
celery only
Use aiohttp when you need a battle-tested async HTTP client or server, especially in applications that make many concurrent HTTP calls (scrapers, API aggregators) or build lightweight async web services. It has a mature ecosystem and is widely used in production.
Sending emails or notifications, processing uploads, running scheduled cron-style jobs, chaining multi-step workflows, fan-out parallel processing.
For new async API projects, FastAPI (built on Starlette/uvicorn) has better developer ergonomics, automatic validation, and docs. For synchronous scripts, requests is simpler. httpx offers a compatible API with both sync and async modes if you want flexibility.
Simple scripts that don't serve web traffic — just use asyncio or threading. If you need sub-millisecond latency, Celery's overhead is too high. For tiny projects, consider RQ (simpler) or FastAPI BackgroundTasks.
aiohttp
celery