


Multithreading vs. Multiprocessing: Choosing the Right Approach in Python
Jul 08, 2025 am 02:48 AMThe choice of concurrency processing in Python depends on the task type. ① Multithreading is suitable for I/O-intensive tasks, such as network requests, file reading and writing, and is implemented through threading or ThreadPoolExecutor; ② Multiprocessing is suitable for CPU-intensive tasks, such as image processing, and multi-core performance can be achieved using multiprocessing or ProcessPoolExecutor; ③ Whether the criterion is whether the program bottleneck is CPU or I/O, priority is given to choosing according to the characteristics of the task to improve efficiency.
Python provides two main concurrency processing methods: multithreading and multiprocessing. Many people will be confused about which one to use when writing programs. In fact, the key lies in what problems you want to solve. If your task is I/O intensive, such as network requests, file reading and writing, then multi-threading is usually enough; if it is CPU intensive, such as image processing and large-scale computing, it is more suitable for multi-processing.

What is suitable for multi-threading?
Multithreading is mainly used in Python to improve the efficiency of I/O-intensive tasks. Although there is a GIL (global interpreter lock) that limits that only one thread can execute Python bytecode at the same time, because I/O operations will release GIL, multiple threads can alternately run while waiting for I/O to improve overall efficiency.

For example, if you download 10 pictures from the Internet, if you download them in serial, each picture takes 1 second, which takes 10 seconds in total; and with multi-threading, it may only take a little more than 1 second to complete. This is the benefit of concurrency.
Common usage scenarios include:

- Web crawler
- Read and write files
- User interface response (avoiding lag)
It is recommended to use threading
module to implement it, or a more advanced concurrent.futures.ThreadPoolExecutor
, the code is simple and easy to manage.
What problems can multi-process solve?
When you need to really use multi-core CPUs for parallel computing, multi-processes are the first choice. It bypasses GIL's limitations, and each process has an independent Python interpreter and memory space, which can execute tasks in parallel.
For example, if you are doing tasks such as data cleaning, machine learning model training, or video transcoding, these are all CPU-intensive. At this time, multi-processes can better exert hardware performance than multi-threads.
It should be noted that the communication cost between processes is higher than that between threads and consumes more resources. You can use the multiprocessing
module to create processes, or use concurrent.futures.ProcessPoolExecutor
to simplify management.
Tips:
- If your task can be split into multiple independent subtasks, it is very suitable for multi-process.
- Data sharing between processes can be shared using
Queue
orManager
objects.
How to choose? Depend on the task type!
The judgment criteria are actually very simple: depends on whether your bottleneck is in CPU or I/O.
If your program is waiting for external responses most of the time (such as waiting for API return or disk read), then use multi-threading; if you are doing operations most of the time, then use multi-processing.
In addition, code complexity and resource overhead must be considered. Multi-threading is lightweight, fast startup, suitable for simple concurrency; multiple processes are heavier, but can be truly parallel.
To give a comparison example:
- A web crawler → multi-threading is more suitable
- A batch processing of an image recognition model → Multi-process better
Basically that's it. Which method to choose depends on the characteristics of the task itself and your performance needs. A point that is not complicated but easy to ignore is: don’t concurrency for the sake of concurrency, first figure out where the bottleneck is, and then decide which method to use.
The above is the detailed content of Multithreading vs. Multiprocessing: Choosing the Right Approach in Python. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!

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