Check if an object exists

I think the easiest from a logical and efficiency point of view is using the queryset’s exists() function, documented here:

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/stable/ref/models/querysets/#django.db.models.query.QuerySet.exists

So in your example above I would simply write:

if User.objects.filter(email = cleaned_info['username']).exists():
    # at least one object satisfying query exists
else:
    # no object satisfying query exists