alembic

A database migration tool for SQLAlchemy.

alembic Permissive license MIT Active ★ 4,320 v1.19.1 released 2026-08-08

Install

alembic on PyPI

pip

pip install alembic

uv

uv add alembic

poetry

poetry add alembic

Package facts

License	MIT (permissive)
Python support	supports the current Python release (>=3.10)
Install friction	low — pure-Python wheel
Runtime dependencies	4 — SQLAlchemy, Mako, typing-extensions, tomli
Maintenance	actively maintained — 5 days since the last release
Last repo commit	2026-08-12
First released	2011-11-30
Popularity	one of the top 1,000 most-downloaded packages on PyPI (30-day window, as of 2026-08-13)
Known vulnerabilities	none known (OSV.dev, checked 2026-08-13)

Evidence: alembic-1.19.1-py3-none-any.whl

Development Status :: 5 - Production/StableEnvironment :: ConsoleIntended Audience :: DevelopersOperating System :: OS IndependentProgramming Language :: PythonProgramming Language :: Python :: 3Programming Language :: Python :: 3.10Programming Language :: Python :: 3.11Programming Language :: Python :: 3.12Programming Language :: Python :: 3.13Programming Language :: Python :: 3.14Programming Language :: Python :: 3.15Programming Language :: Python :: Implementation :: CPythonProgramming Language :: Python :: Implementation :: PyPyTopic :: Database :: Front-Ends

About alembic

from the package's own PyPI description — quoted content, verbatim

Alembic is a database migrations tool written by the author of SQLAlchemy <http://www.sqlalchemy.org>_. A migrations tool offers the following functionality:

Can emit ALTER statements to a database in order to change the structure of tables and other constructs
Provides a system whereby "migration scripts" may be constructed; each script indicates a particular series of steps that can "upgrade" a target database to a new version, and optionally a series of steps that can "downgrade" similarly, doing the same steps in reverse.
Allows the scripts to execute in some sequential manner.

The goals of Alembic are:

Very open ended and transparent configuration and operation. A new Alembic environment is generated from a set of templates which is selected among a set of options when setup first occurs. The templates then deposit a series of scripts that define fully how database connectivity is established and how migration scripts are invoked; the migration scripts themselves are generated from a template within that series of scripts. The scripts can then be further customized to define exactly how databases will be interacted with and what...

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AI interpretation — verify before relying

AI-generated interpretation of the package facts above; every digit, version, license, or vulnerability id it cites is grounded in the facts already shown on this page

Alembic is a database migrations tool that generates and manages schema changes for SQLAlchemy-backed applications, supporting both automatic migration generation from model changes and manual migration scripts with full transactional DDL support.

Low friction install with a pure-Python wheel. Alembic is actively maintained with a recent release (5 days old), strong community engagement (4320 GitHub stars), and current Python support through 3.15. Its four runtime dependencies (SQLAlchemy, Mako, typing-extensions, tomli) are all stable, widely-used libraries.

Alembic is distributed under the MIT license, a permissive open-source license that allows free use, modification, and distribution in both open-source and proprietary projects with minimal restrictions.

Usage

pip install alembic

from alembic.config import Config
from alembic import command

config = Config('alembic.ini')
command.upgrade(config, 'head')

Requires SQLAlchemy to be installed and configured; a database connection and alembic.ini configuration file must be set up before migrations can run.

Verdict: Alembic is a production-stable, actively maintained database migration tool with low install friction and strong community adoption. Its MIT license poses no restrictions for most use cases. The tool is well-suited for any SQLAlchemy project requiring schema versioning, with no known security vulnerabilities and broad Python version support.

Needs verification

Whether the package's auto-generation feature works reliably for complex schema changes in real-world projects
Performance characteristics when managing large numbers of migration files or complex dependency graphs

database schema migrationsSQLAlchemy database versioningauto-generate database migrationsDDL change managementdatabase upgrade downgrade scriptstransactional database migrationsalembic migrations tool