Hypercorn

What it is and what it does

Hypercorn is a web server for running ASGI and WSGI applications asynchronously. It supports modern HTTP protocols (HTTP/1, HTTP/2, WebSockets, and optionally HTTP/3 via aioquic) and can use different async backends—asyncio, uvloop, or trio—depending on your concurrency needs. The package was inspired by Gunicorn and was originally part of the Quart framework before being extracted as a standalone server.

You can run Hypercorn from the command line or embed it programmatically in your application using its async API. It has 8 core runtime dependencies (h11, h2, wsproto, priority, taskgroup, exceptiongroup, tomli, typing_extensions) that handle the low-level protocol work, keeping the package itself focused on server orchestration and request handling.

Use it for:

• Serve ASGI frameworks with HTTP/2 and WebSocket support.
• Run WSGI applications alongside modern async code in a single server.
• Deploy applications requiring WebSocket communication over HTTP/1 or HTTP/2.
• Use alternative async backends (uvloop, trio) to optimize for specific workload patterns.
• Serve HTTP/3 traffic when aioquic is installed and QUIC bindings are configured.

Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying

Hypercorn is an ASGI and WSGI web server supporting HTTP/1, HTTP/2, WebSockets, and optionally HTTP/3, with pluggable async worker types (asyncio, uvloop, trio).

Yes, if you need an ASGI/WSGI server with HTTP/2 and WebSocket support. Hypercorn is stable and supports current Python versions, but its aging maintenance status (279 days since last release) means slower issue response. Suitable for production if you can tolerate slower upstream updates; consider alternatives if you need active, rapid development.

Install

hypercorn on PyPI

pip install hypercorn

uv add hypercorn

poetry add hypercorn

Installing Hypercorn

Before you install

Low install friction with a pure-Python wheel distribution. Maintenance status is aging—last release was 279 days ago—so expect slower response to issues, though the package remains functional for current Python versions (3.10–3.14).

License in practice

MIT license is permissive and imposes no restrictions on use, modification, or redistribution in proprietary or open-source projects.

Quickstart

pip install hypercorn

import asyncio
from hypercorn.config import Config
from hypercorn.asyncio import serve

asyncio.run(serve(app, Config()))

Requires Python 3.10 or later; an ASGI or WSGI application must be provided.

Verify before relying

• Performance characteristics (throughput, latency) compared to other ASGI servers under typical workloads.
• Production readiness and stability guarantees given the aging maintenance status.
• Whether HTTP/3 support via the h3 extra is production-ready or experimental.

Package facts

Evidence: hypercorn-0.18.0-py3-none-any.whl

Tags

More Python Modules packages