httpx vs requests: Do You Need to Switch

requests is still fine for most scripts — httpx earns its place specifically with async code and HTTP/2, not as a blanket upgrade

You don’t need to switch from requests to httpx unless you’re writing async code or need HTTP/2 — for everything else, requests remains a perfectly reasonable, well-maintained default. requests has been the default HTTP client in Python for well over a decade. httpx doesn’t obsolete it — it fills two specific gaps requests was never built to cover.

What httpx actually adds

Async support. requests is synchronous only — there’s no official async version, and it blocks while waiting on a response. httpx ships both a sync and an async client (httpx.AsyncClient), letting you issue many requests concurrently with asyncio instead of one at a time. If you’re writing async code — a FastAPI backend calling external APIs, a concurrent scraper — this is the actual reason to reach for httpx.

HTTP/2 support. requests only speaks HTTP/1.1. httpx supports HTTP/2 (opt-in via http2=True), which can matter for performance against servers and APIs that support it, particularly with many small requests to the same host.

What’s the same

httpx was deliberately designed with a requests-compatible API — httpx.get(), .post(), response .json(), .status_code, sessions via httpx.Client() — so migrating simple synchronous code is often just a find-and-replace of the import. It’s not a perfect drop-in, though: some requests-specific behavior and the ecosystem of requests plugins/adapters don’t carry over automatically.

Performance: not the deciding factor

For plain synchronous requests, httpx isn’t meaningfully faster than requests — they’re comparable. The performance case for httpx is specifically about concurrency (many requests in parallel via async), not raw single-request speed. Don’t switch expecting a sync speed boost; you won’t get one.

The actual decision

• Writing synchronous scripts with no async involved → requests is fine, and there’s no strong reason to migrate working code.
• Writing async code, or need to make many concurrent requests efficiently → httpx, clearly.
• Need HTTP/2 → httpx is your only option between the two.
• Starting a new project with no strong opinion either way → httpx, since it covers everything requests does plus the async path if you need it later without a rewrite.