Comparing
The next generation HTTP client
Official Python SDK for the OpenAI API — call GPT-4, DALL-E, Whisper, and Embeddings with a clean async-first interface.
| Metric | httpx | openai |
|---|---|---|
| Ecosystem | Python | Python |
| Difficulty | Intermediate | Beginner ✓ |
| Weekly downloads | 119.1M↑ | 9.0M |
| Latest version | v0.28.1 | v1.54.0 |
| Recipes | 2 | 3↑ |
httpx only
Shared
openai only
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.
Integrating GPT-4/3.5 into apps, generating embeddings for semantic search, transcribing audio with Whisper, generating images with DALL-E, or building agentic workflows with tool calling.
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.
When you need to run models locally (use ollama or transformers), when cost is a hard constraint for high-volume tasks, or when you need a specific open-source model.
httpx
openai