title: An MVC Framework Comparison (primarily cost/speed tradeoffs)
body: <p>I'm developing an idea for a web application that would be well suited to one of the popular MVC frameworks out there right now, but torn between which to go with. I was originally going to go with <a href="http://pylonshq.com" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Pylons</a>, but upon reading about the <a href="http://www.microsoftstartupzone.com/BIZSPARK/Pages/At_a_Glance.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">BizSpark</a> program, I'm reconsidering ASP.NET MVC.</p>
  
  <p>The hitch is that if I'm successful I'll need to pony up for all the software I'll be using (SQL Server and Windows Server).</p>
  
  <p>So my question is, how does the performance compare between ASP.NET MVC and the various OSS MVC frameworks, specifically Pylons (or web.py or Django). And, if ASP.NET MVC is that much better, is it still worth the cost of the backend? </p>
  
  <p>Hosting plans seem similar enough cost-wise that I don't think it's too big of an issue. I know that StackOverflow runs ASP.NET MVC, and handles all the traffic it gets very well on just two servers. Are there any other "large" sites that run ASP.NET MVC too?</p>
  
  <p>Personal background: I'm most familiar with .NET (though I haven't really used its MVC framework), but I've built a couple of smaller web apps based on <a href="http://www.sogeti-phoenix.com/Blogs/post/2008/10/Python-Frameworks.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Python MVC Frameworks recently</a>.</p>
  
  <p>I looked at Rails, but I'm not as familiar with Ruby, and some of it seems surprisingly complicated. PHP is right out for me.</p>