Atomic increment of a counter in django

Use an F expression:

from django.db.models import F

either in update():

Counter.objects.get_or_create(name=name)
Counter.objects.filter(name=name).update(count=F("count") + 1)

or on the object instance:

counter, _ = Counter.objects.get_or_create(name=name)
counter.count = F("count") + 1
counter.save(update_fields=["count"])

Remember to specify update_fields, or you might encounter race conditions on other fields of the model.

A note on the race condition avoided by using F expressions has been added to the official documentation.