Comparing
Promise based HTTP client for the browser and node.js
The next generation HTTP client
| Metric | axios | httpx |
|---|---|---|
| Ecosystem | npm | Python |
| Difficulty | Advanced | Intermediate ✓ |
| Weekly downloads | 101.0M | 119.1M↑ |
| Latest version | v1.14.0 | v0.28.1 |
| Recipes | 7↑ | 2 |
axios only
Shared
httpx only
Use axios when you need request/response interceptors (auth headers, logging, retry logic), want automatic JSON serialisation/deserialisation, need to cancel in-flight requests, or want consistent behaviour between browser and Node.js environments.
Use httpx when building FastAPI or asyncio applications that call external APIs. Also reach for it when you need HTTP/2 support, a requests-compatible API with async support, or a single library that works in both sync and async contexts.
For simple requests in modern apps, fetch is built-in and perfectly adequate. For lightweight browser-only code, ky is a smaller alternative. React Query or SWR abstract data fetching further — prefer those when you also need caching and state management.
For simple synchronous scripts where you already use requests, there's little reason to switch — requests has a larger ecosystem of auth libraries and middleware. For high-volume async scraping at scale, aiohttp's lower-level control may be more efficient.
axios
+3 more
httpx