alive-progress

What it is and what it does

alive-progress is a terminal progress bar library that shows real-time throughput, estimated time to completion, and animated visual feedback for long-running tasks. It updates efficiently at a throttled rate to keep CPU usage low during high-iteration workloads, and automatically enriches print and logging statements with the current bar position. The library includes a unique pause mechanism that lets you suspend processing, return to the Python prompt to inspect or fix items, and then resume from exactly where you left off.

The package is built on two runtime dependencies: about-time for elapsed time tracking and graphemeu for proper Unicode grapheme handling in terminal output. It supports modern Python versions from 3.9 through 3.14 and is actively maintained. The bar is highly customizable with multiple built-in spinner and bar styles, and includes factories to create custom animations. It also detects under- and overflow conditions, allowing you to track counts beyond actual iterations.

Use it for:

• Monitor long-running data processing pipelines with accurate ETA and throughput feedback
• Pause a batch job mid-run to manually inspect or fix problematic items, then resume without reprocessing
• Display progress for remote SSH tasks where you need confirmation the process is still running
• Enrich application logs with progress position automatically during multithreaded operations
• Resume interrupted computations by skipping already-processed items while maintaining accurate ETA

Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying

Displays an animated progress bar in the terminal with real-time throughput, ETA calculation, and the ability to pause and resume long-running tasks without losing state.

Yes. The package is stable, actively maintained, has no known vulnerabilities, and solves a real problem—showing progress with pause/resume capability that no other Python progress bar offers. Low install friction and permissive licensing make it a straightforward add to any project needing terminal progress feedback.

Install

alive-progress on PyPI

pip install alive-progress

uv add alive-progress

poetry add alive-progress

Installing alive-progress

Before you install

Low friction install with only two runtime dependencies (about-time and graphemeu). Active maintenance with recent commits and a stable production release; supports current Python versions from 3.9 through 3.14.

License in practice

MIT license is permissive, allowing free use, modification, and distribution in both open-source and commercial projects with minimal restrictions.

Quickstart

pip install alive-progress

from alive_progress import alive_bar

with alive_bar(total_items) as bar:
    for item in items:
        # process item
        bar()

Requires Python 3.9 or later.

Verify before relying

• Whether the pause/resume feature works correctly across all terminal emulators and SSH sessions as claimed
• Performance impact of the multithreaded print/logging hooks under high concurrency
• Compatibility with non-POSIX terminals (Windows CMD, PowerShell native support)

Package facts

Evidence: alive_progress-3.3.0-py3-none-any.whl

Keywords: progress, bar, progress-bar, progressbar, spinner, eta, monitoring, python, terminal, multithreaded, REPL, alive, animated, visual, feedback, simple, live, efficient, monitor, stats, elapsed, time, throughput

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