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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Microframeworks
  4. Microframeworks
  5. Elixir vs Flask

Elixir vs Flask

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Flask
Flask
Stacks19.3K
Followers16.2K
Votes60
Elixir
Elixir
Stacks3.5K
Followers3.3K
Votes1.3K
GitHub Stars26.0K
Forks3.5K

Elixir vs Flask: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this Markdown, we will compare Elixir and Flask, highlighting their key differences.

  1. Language Type and Purpose: Elixir is a functional programming language that runs on the Erlang virtual machine (BEAM). It is designed for building scalable and fault-tolerant applications that can handle massive concurrency. On the other hand, Flask is a micro web framework written in Python. It is used for developing small to medium-sized web applications quickly and easily.

  2. Concurrency Model: Elixir leverages the Actor model of concurrency, where lightweight processes (actors) communicate with each other using message passing. This approach allows for highly concurrent and distributed systems. In contrast, Flask follows a single-threaded synchronous model where it processes one request at a time. It relies on Python's Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) for concurrency.

  3. Scalability and Performance: Due to its concurrency model, Elixir excels in scaling horizontally across multiple machines and handling massive amounts of concurrent requests. It is particularly well-suited for building real-time systems or handling high-traffic applications. Flask, although scalable, may face limitations in handling high concurrency or heavy load situations.

  4. Syntax and Paradigm: Elixir uses an expressive and dynamically-typed language syntax heavily influenced by Ruby and functional programming concepts. It promotes immutability, pattern matching, and a functional coding style. Flask, being written in Python, follows a more traditional object-oriented programming (OOP) approach with a syntax that emphasizes readability and simplicity.

  5. Framework Complexity: Elixir, being a full-fledged programming language, brings with it a steeper learning curve than Flask. It requires a strong understanding of functional programming principles and the actor model. On the other hand, Flask is relatively easy to learn and use, making it an excellent choice for beginners or developers who want to quickly prototype web applications.

  6. Ecosystem and Community: Elixir, although gaining popularity rapidly, has a smaller community compared to Flask. Flask benefits from being built with Python, which is one of the most widely-used programming languages globally. Python has a massive ecosystem with abundant libraries, frameworks, and resources available. Elixir, while still growing, has a more limited ecosystem in terms of libraries and mature frameworks.

In summary, Elixir differs from Flask in terms of language type and purpose, concurrency model, scalability and performance, syntax and paradigm, framework complexity, and ecosystem and community.

Overall, Elixir is ideal for building highly concurrent and scalable applications, while Flask is suited for rapid development of small to medium-sized web applications.

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Advice on Flask, Elixir

Timm
Timm

VP Of Engineering at Flexperto GmbH

Nov 10, 2020

Decided

We have a lot of experience in JavaScript, writing our services in NodeJS allows developers to transition to the back end without any friction, without having to learn a new language. There is also the option to write services in TypeScript, which adds an expressive type layer. The semi-shared ecosystem between front and back end is nice as well, though specifically NodeJS libraries sometimes suffer in quality, compared to other major languages.

As for why we didn't pick the other languages, most of it comes down to "personal preference" and historically grown code bases, but let's do some post-hoc deduction:

Go is a practical choice, reasonably easy to learn, but until we find performance issues with our NodeJS stack, there is simply no reason to switch. The benefits of using NodeJS so far outweigh those of picking Go. This might change in the future.

PHP is a language we're still using in big parts of our system, and are still sometimes writing new code in. Modern PHP has fixed some of its issues, and probably has the fastest development cycle time, but it suffers around modelling complex asynchronous tasks, and (on a personal note) lack of support for writing in a functional style.

We don't use Python, Elixir or Ruby, mostly because of personal preference and for historic reasons.

Rust, though I personally love and use it in my projects, would require us to specifically hire for that, as the learning curve is quite steep. Its web ecosystem is OK by now (see https://www.arewewebyet.org/), but in my opinion, it is still no where near that of the other web languages. In other words, we are not willing to pay the price for playing this innovation card.

Haskell, as with Rust, I personally adore, but is simply too esoteric for us. There are problem domains where it shines, ours is not one of them.

682k views682k
Comments
Kristan Eres
Kristan Eres

Senior Solutions Analyst

Jul 30, 2020

Needs adviceonDjangoDjangoPythonPythonFlaskFlask

My journey to developing REST APIs started with Flask Restful, and I've found it to be enough for the needs of my project back then. Now that I've started investing more time on personal projects, I've yet to decide if I should move to use Django for writing REST APIs. I often see job posts looking for Python+Django developers, but it's usually for full-stack developers. I'm primarily interested in Data Engineering, so most of my web projects are back end.

Should I continue with what I know (Flask) or move on to Django?

392k views392k
Comments
Saurav
Saurav

Application Devloper at Bny Mellon

Mar 27, 2020

Needs advice

I have just started learning Python 3 weeks ago. I want to create a REST API using python. The API will be used to save form data in an Oracle database. The front end is using AngularJS 8 with Angular Material. In python, there are so many frameworks to develop REST APIs.

I am looking for some suggestions which REST framework to choose?

Here are some features I am looking for:

  • Easy integration and unit testing, like in Angular. We just want to run a command.

  • Code packaging, like in java maven project we can build and package. I am looking for something which I can push in as an artifact and deploy whole code as a package.

  • Support for swagger/ OpenAPI

  • Support for JSON Web Token

  • Support for test case coverage report

Framework can have features included or can be available by extension. Also, you can suggest a framework other than the ones I have mentioned.

337k views337k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Flask
Flask
Elixir
Elixir

Flask is intended for getting started very quickly and was developed with best intentions in mind.

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
26.0K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
3.5K
Stacks
19.3K
Stacks
3.5K
Followers
16.2K
Followers
3.3K
Votes
60
Votes
1.3K
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 10
    For it flexibility
  • 9
    Flexibilty and easy to use
  • 7
    User friendly
  • 6
    Secured
  • 5
    Unopinionated
Cons
  • 10
    Not JS
  • 7
    Context
  • 5
    Not fast
  • 1
    Don't has many module as in spring
Pros
  • 174
    Concurrency
  • 163
    Functional
  • 133
    Erlang vm
  • 113
    Great documentation
  • 105
    Great tooling
Cons
  • 11
    Fewer jobs for Elixir experts
  • 7
    Smaller userbase than other mainstream languages
  • 5
    Elixir's dot notation less readable ("object": 1st arg)
  • 4
    Dynamic typing
  • 2
    Difficult to understand

What are some alternatives to Flask, Elixir?

JavaScript

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

PHP

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Java

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

Golang

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

ExpressJS

ExpressJS

Express is a minimal and flexible node.js web application framework, providing a robust set of features for building single and multi-page, and hybrid web applications.

Scala

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

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