chardet

Universal character encoding detector

chardet Permissive license 0BSD Active ★ 2,659 v7.5.1 released 2026-08-06

Install

chardet on PyPI

pip

pip install chardet

uv

uv add chardet

poetry

poetry add chardet

Package facts

License	0BSD (permissive)
Python support	supports the current Python release (>=3.10)
Install friction	low — pure-Python wheel
Runtime dependencies	none
Maintenance	actively maintained — 7 days since the last release
Last repo commit	2026-08-08
First released	2006-12-23
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: chardet-7.5.1-py3-none-any.whl

Keywords: chardet, charset, detection, encoding, unicode

Development Status :: 5 - Production/StableIntended 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 :: Implementation :: CPythonProgramming Language :: Python :: Implementation :: PyPyTopic :: Software Development :: Libraries :: Python ModulesTopic :: Text Processing :: Linguistic

About chardet

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

chardet

Universal character encoding detector.

License: 0BSD (image) Documentation (image) codecov (image)

chardet 7 is a ground-up, 0BSD-licensed rewrite of chardet. Same package name, same public API — drop-in replacement for chardet 5.x/6.x, just much faster and more accurate. Python 3.10+, zero runtime dependencies, works on PyPy.

Why chardet 7?

99.3% accuracy on 2,517 test files. 134x faster than chardet 6.0.0, and +13.9pp more accurate than charset-normalizer 3.4.9 at 2.6x its speed. Language detection for every result. MIME type detection for binary files. 0BSD licensed.

| | chardet 7.5.0 (mypyc) | chardet 6.0.0 | [charset-normalizer] 3.4.9 | | ---------------------- |...

Read as markdown · JSON record · Source repository · Homepage · Docs

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

Detects character encoding and language in byte strings with 99.3% accuracy, supporting 99 encodings and 49 languages, plus MIME type identification for binary files.

Installs with zero runtime dependencies and low friction. Actively maintained with a release 7 days ago; Python 3.10+ support across CPython and PyPy.

Released under 0BSD (permissive), a public-domain-equivalent license with no attribution or derivative-work restrictions—a significant change from the LGPL of earlier versions.

Usage

pip install chardet

import chardet
result = chardet.detect(b"Hello, world!")
print(result)  # {'encoding': 'ascii', 'confidence': 1.0, 'language': 'en', 'mime_type': 'text/plain'}

Requires Python 3.10 or later.

Verdict: A ground-up rewrite offering 134× speed and 11pp accuracy gain over chardet 6, with zero dependencies, active maintenance, and permissive 0BSD licensing. No known vulnerabilities. Suitable for production use where encoding detection is a core need.

Needs verification

Whether the mypyc-compiled wheels are included in standard pip installs or require explicit opt-in.
Performance characteristics on free-threaded Python (3.13+) relative to the claimed thread-safety improvements.
Real-world accuracy on mixed-encoding or corrupted byte streams beyond the 2,517-file test set.

character encoding detectioncharset detectorunicode encoding identifierlanguage detectionMIME type detectiontext encoding analyzerchardet alternative