Why Zapier Doesn't Use Gevent (Yet)

Zapier processes a high volume of outbound API requests, leading to significant wait times that equate to about four minutes of CPU time per second. To manage this workload, Zapier considered switching to Gevent from their current Python and Django setup, which relies heavily on Celery for asynchronous processing. Gevent, with its cooperative multitasking capabilities via Greenlets, could potentially reduce RAM usage and improve CPU utilization. However, the transition would require replacing third-party libraries, ensuring Greenlet-safety in the code, implementing connection pooling, and managing blocking operations. Despite successfully increasing worker utilization and reducing RAM usage during a trial, Zapier experienced a 50% slowdown in task execution times and increased code complexity, leading them to postpone the switch to Gevent. They anticipate reconsidering this transition as they continue to shift their workload to microservices, but for now, they will maintain their current single-threaded processes.

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