Django REST Framework: slow browsable UI because of large related table

Take a look at using an autocomplete widget, or drop down to using a dumb textfield widget.

Autocompletion docs here: http://www.django-rest-framework.org/topics/browsable-api/#autocomplete

You can force using TextInput with simple:

from django.forms import widgets
...
class YourSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    param = serializers.PrimaryKeyRelatedField(
        widget=widgets.TextInput
    )

Or after proper autocomplete_light configuration:

import autocomplete_light
...
class YourSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    paramOne = serializers.PrimaryKeyRelatedField(
        widget=autocomplete_light.ChoiceWidget('RelatedModelAutocomplete')
    )
    paramMany = serializers.PrimaryKeyRelatedField(
        widget=autocomplete_light.MultipleChoiceWidget('RelatedModelAutocomplete')
    )

To filter out results which are returned by autocomplete_light this part of documentation.

Note that you can disable the HTML form and keep the raw data json entry with:

class BrowsableAPIRendererWithoutForms(BrowsableAPIRenderer):
    """Renders the browsable api, but excludes the forms."""
    def get_rendered_html_form(self, data, view, method, request):
        return None

and in settings.py:

REST_FRAMEWORK = {
    'DEFAULT_RENDERER_CLASSES': (
        'rest_framework.renderers.JSONRenderer',
        'application.api.renderers.BrowsableAPIRendererWithoutForms',
    ),
}

this will speed things up and you can still post from from the browsable ui.