breadability
Port of Readability HTML parser in Python
Decision gist · record as of 2026-08-14
Yes. The package is actively maintained, has no known vulnerabilities, installs with low friction, and solves a well-defined problem. It is suitable for production use if you need reliable HTML-to-readable-content extraction. The BSD license poses no restrictions. Install only if you can satisfy the lxml build dependency; otherwise, consider it a straightforward choice.AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying
Before you install
- lxml requires libxml2-dev and libxslt-dev system libraries to compile; install via apt-get or equivalent before pip install.
- Low friction install with a pure-Python wheel.
- Active maintenance—last release 2 days ago.
License · maintenance · safety
BSD (permissive) — BSD license (permissive). You can use, modify, and distribute this package freely in both open-source and commercial projects with minimal restrictions.
last release 2026-08-12 (2 days) · last repo commit 2026-08-12 · 205 stars
0 known vulnerabilities (OSV.dev, 2026-08-14) · 100,652 downloads/mo, #12,978 on PyPI
Alternatives
Verify before relying
from breadability.readable import Article
html_text = "<html>...</html>"
url = "http://example.com/article"
document = Article(html_text, url=url)
print(document.readable)- Whether the package handles modern HTML5 and contemporary web layouts as well as the original Arc90 readability algorithm.
- Performance characteristics on large documents or high-volume extraction workloads.
- Accuracy of content extraction on contemporary news sites and blogging platforms.
What it is and what it does
Breadability is a Python port of the Arc90 Readability algorithm, designed to parse HTML pages and extract the main article content while filtering out navigation, sidebars, ads, and other boilerplate. It uses a scoring system to identify the most likely content container, then cleans and returns readable HTML or text.
The package provides both a command-line interface and a Python API. It depends on docopt for CLI argument parsing, chardet for character encoding detection, and lxml for HTML parsing. The library is maintained and actively used in production tools. It supports Python 2.6 through 3.6 and offers options for debugging parse decisions, opening results in a browser, or returning full documents instead of fragments.
Use it for
- Extract article text from news websites for content aggregation or archival tools.
- Clean HTML before feeding it to NLP or text analysis pipelines.
- Build a web scraper that reliably isolates main content across diverse site layouts.
- Debug why a parser chose certain nodes as content using verbose scoring output.
- Convert web pages to readable text for offline reading or accessibility.
Worth the install?
AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page. Verify before relying on it.
Yes.
The package is actively maintained, has no known vulnerabilities, installs with low friction, and solves a well-defined problem. It is suitable for production use if you need reliable HTML-to-readable-content extraction. The BSD license poses no restrictions. Install only if you can satisfy the lxml build dependency; otherwise, consider it a straightforward choice.
Install
breadability on PyPI
Before you install
Low friction install with a pure-Python wheel. Active maintenance—last release 2 days ago. Depends on lxml, which requires C headers (libxml2-dev, libxslt-dev) at build time on some systems, but this is a one-time setup cost.
lxml requires libxml2-dev and libxslt-dev system libraries to compile; install via apt-get or equivalent before pip install.
License in practice
BSD license (permissive). You can use, modify, and distribute this package freely in both open-source and commercial projects with minimal restrictions.
Quickstart
from breadability.readable import Article
html_text = "<html>...</html>"
url = "http://example.com/article"
document = Article(html_text, url=url)
print(document.readable)Verify before relying
- Whether the package handles modern HTML5 and contemporary web layouts as well as the original Arc90 readability algorithm.
- Performance characteristics on large documents or high-volume extraction workloads.
- Accuracy of content extraction on contemporary news sites and blogging platforms.
Package facts
| License | BSD permissive |
| Python support | Not specified |
| Install friction | Low. Pure-Python wheel |
| Runtime dependencies | 3 packagesdocoptchardetlxml |
| Maintenance | Actively maintained 2 days since the last release |
| Last repo commit | |
| First released | |
| Downloads | 100,652 / month, #12,978 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 :: BSD LicenseOperating System :: OS IndependentProgramming Language :: PythonProgramming Language :: Python :: 2Programming Language :: Python :: 2.6Programming Language :: Python :: 2.7Programming Language :: Python :: 3Programming Language :: Python :: 3.2Programming Language :: Python :: 3.3Programming Language :: Python :: 3.4Programming Language :: Python :: 3.5Programming Language :: Python :: 3.6Programming Language :: Python :: Implementation :: CPythonTopic :: Internet :: WWW/HTTPTopic :: Software Development :: Pre-processorsTopic :: Text Processing :: FiltersTopic :: Text Processing :: Markup :: HTML |
Evidence: breadability-0.1.21-py2.py3-none-any.whl
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See also jusText · readability-lxml · readabilipy · goose3 · newspaper3k · readable-content · newspaper4k · textract · htmlmin · textacy