Comparing
Distributed task queue for async and scheduled background jobs in Python.
Lightning-fast ASGI server for running async Python web apps (FastAPI, Starlette).
| Metric | celery | uvicorn |
|---|---|---|
| Ecosystem | Python | Python |
| Difficulty | Intermediate | Beginner ✓ |
| Weekly downloads | 3.2M | 7.2M↑ |
| Latest version | v5.4.0 | v0.30.6 |
| Recipes | 3↑ | 2 |
celery only
Shared
uvicorn only
Sending emails or notifications, processing uploads, running scheduled cron-style jobs, chaining multi-step workflows, fan-out parallel processing.
Running any ASGI framework: FastAPI, Starlette, Django Channels, Litestar. Development server with hot reload. Production with Gunicorn+uvicorn workers.
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.
WSGI apps (Flask, Django without Channels) — use gunicorn with sync workers instead.
celery
uvicorn