BeautifulSoup
Screen-scraping library
Decision gist · record as of 2026-08-14
No. This package is abandoned and explicitly superseded by beautifulsoup4. The maintainers recommend migrating to beautifulsoup4 instead. Install only if you are maintaining legacy code that cannot be updated and have no other option; for any new project, use beautifulsoup4.AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying
Before you install
- This version targets Python 2.7 and is no longer maintained; the maintainers explicitly recommend migrating to beautifulsoup4 instead.
- Installation is straightforward with no runtime dependencies, but the package is abandoned as of 2019 and explicitly superseded by beautifulsoup4.
- The 3.x series ended development in 2011.
License · maintenance · safety
MIT (permissive) — Licensed under the MIT license (permissive), which places no restrictions on use, modification, or distribution.
last release 2019-10-05 (2505 days)
0 known vulnerabilities (OSV.dev, 2026-08-14) · 156,790 downloads/mo, #10,775 on PyPI
Alternatives
Verify before relying
pip install beautifulsoup==3.2.2
from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup
soup = BeautifulSoup('<html><body>Hello</body></html>')
print(soup.find('body'))- Whether the package still works reliably with modern Python versions beyond 2.7
- Current state of the homepage at http://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/ and availability of migration guides
What it is and what it does
Beautiful Soup is a screen-scraping library that parses HTML and XML documents into a tree structure, providing Pythonic methods to search, iterate, and modify the parsed content. It sits on top of an underlying HTML or XML parser and abstracts away the parsing details so you can focus on extracting data from markup.
This package is version 3.2.2, the final release of the 3.x series from 2019. Development ended in 2011, and the maintainers have explicitly discontinued this version in favor of beautifulsoup4. The package carries no runtime dependencies and installs with low friction, but it is no longer maintained and is not recommended for new projects.
Use it for
- Extract data from static HTML pages when you are locked into Python 2.7 and cannot upgrade
- Parse XML documents in legacy systems where beautifulsoup4 is not available
- Maintain or debug existing code that depends on Beautiful Soup 3.x without immediate migration
Worth the install?
AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page. Verify before relying on it.
No.
This package is abandoned and explicitly superseded by beautifulsoup4. The maintainers recommend migrating to beautifulsoup4 instead. Install only if you are maintaining legacy code that cannot be updated and have no other option; for any new project, use beautifulsoup4.
Install
beautifulsoup on PyPI
Before you install
Installation is straightforward with no runtime dependencies, but the package is abandoned as of 2019 and explicitly superseded by beautifulsoup4. The 3.x series ended development in 2011.
This version targets Python 2.7 and is no longer maintained; the maintainers explicitly recommend migrating to beautifulsoup4 instead.
License in practice
Licensed under the MIT license (permissive), which places no restrictions on use, modification, or distribution.
Quickstart
pip install beautifulsoup==3.2.2
from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup
soup = BeautifulSoup('<html><body>Hello</body></html>')
print(soup.find('body'))Verify before relying
- Whether the package still works reliably with modern Python versions beyond 2.7
- Current state of the homepage at http://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/ and availability of migration guides
Package facts
| License | MIT permissive |
| Python support | Not specified |
| Install friction | Low. Pure-Python wheel |
| Runtime dependencies | None |
| Maintenance | Abandoned 2,505 days since the last release |
| First released | |
| Downloads | 156,790 / month, #10,775 on PyPI 30-day window, as of 2026-08-14 |
| Known vulnerabilities | None known OSV.dev, checked 2026-08-14 |
| Classifiers | Development Status :: 5 - Production/StableIntended Audience :: DevelopersLicense :: OSI Approved :: Python Software Foundation LicenseProgramming Language :: PythonProgramming Language :: Python :: 2.7Topic :: Software Development :: Libraries :: Python ModulesTopic :: Text Processing :: Markup :: HTMLTopic :: Text Processing :: Markup :: SGMLTopic :: Text Processing :: Markup :: XML |
Evidence: BeautifulSoup-3.2.2-py2-none-any.whl
Tags
Let your AI agent find packages like this
Example. Real query, live index.
You found this page by searching. An agent finds it by wishing: SkillFed indexes 14,416 PyPI packages by what they can do, searchable in plain language.
wish › “html tree navigation”
- BeautifulSoupBeautiful Soup parses HTML and XML documents into a navigable tree,…
- beautifulsoup4Beautiful Soup parses HTML and XML documents into a navigable tree,…
- tree-sitter-htmlProvides an HTML grammar for tree-sitter, enabling incremental…
Give your agent the search over MCP, or paste the wish link into any chat.
More Python Modules packages
Converts domain names between Unicode and ASCII-compatible encoding (Punycode) according to IDNA 2008 and Unicode Technical Standard 46, with security validation and broader script coverage than the standard library.
Install it if you work with internationalized domain names, need to validate domains, or use HTTP clients that depend on it transitively.
Setuptools is a Python build backend and package management tool that handles building, distributing, and installing Python packages, including support for C/C++ extension modules.
PyYAML parses and emits YAML 1.1 data format, enabling serialization and deserialization of configuration files and Python objects to and from human-readable YAML text.
Pydantic validates Python data structures against type hints, coercing and checking input at runtime to ensure it matches a declared schema.
Provides reusable metadata objects for use with PEP-593 `typing.Annotated` to express common constraints like bounds, collection sizes, and predicates on types.
Install it if you use or build libraries that need to express type constraints in a standardized, inspectable way—or if you want to annotate your own types with…
Provides runtime tools to inspect and introspect Python type annotations, enabling programmatic examination of type hints at execution time.
See also beautifulsoup4 · inscriptis · prettierfier · soup2dict · bs4 · googlesearch-python · soupsieve · feedparser-sgmllib · turbohtml · parsel