---
id: cloudant
version: "2.15.0"
license: unclear
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: abandoned
---

# cloudant — Cloudant / CouchDB Client Library

License: permissive · Maintenance: abandoned · Downloads: 273.9K/mo

## What it is and what it does

Cloudant is the official Python client for IBM's Cloudant managed database service and open-source CouchDB. It provides a high-level interface to create, read, update, and delete documents, manage databases, and execute queries against a remote Cloudant or CouchDB instance over HTTP. The library handles connection pooling, authentication, and serialization of Python objects to JSON documents.

However, this package is deprecated and reached end-of-life on Dec 31 2021. IBM has moved development to cloudant-python-sdk, and this library will receive only critical maintenance. The repository is archived and no longer actively maintained. Existing projects using it will continue to work, but new projects should adopt the replacement library instead.

Use it for:

- Connect to a Cloudant database on IBM Cloud and perform CRUD operations on JSON documents.
- Query documents using Cloudant Query (Mango query syntax) to find records matching specific criteria.
- Build a Python application that persists data to a managed CouchDB-compatible service.
- Migrate legacy code from an older Cloudant client before support ends.

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

A Python client library for connecting to and querying Cloudant and CouchDB databases via HTTP, now deprecated in favor of cloudant-python-sdk.

No, unless maintaining legacy code. The package is deprecated and abandoned; its end-of-life was Dec 31 2021. New projects should install cloudant-python-sdk instead. Existing applications using this library will continue to function, but no new features or non-critical fixes will be provided.

## Install

pip install cloudant
uv add cloudant
poetry add cloudant

## Installing cloudant

Before you install: Low install friction with a single dependency (requests), but the package is abandoned as of its end-of-life date of Dec 31 2021. The repository is archived and receives no updates beyond critical maintenance. New projects should use cloudant-python-sdk instead.

License in practice: Licensed under Apache License 2.0 (permissive), allowing commercial and private use with minimal restrictions.

Quickstart:

pip install cloudant

from cloudant.client import Cloudant

client = Cloudant('username', 'password', url='https://account.cloudant.com')
db = client['database_name']
doc = db['document_id']

Requires network access to a Cloudant or CouchDB server; end-of-life status means no future bug fixes or feature updates.

Verify before relying:

- Whether critical security patches are still being applied after Dec 31 2021 end-of-life date.
- Compatibility with Python versions beyond 3.5 (classifiers list only 3.5 explicitly).

## Package facts

- License: not declared (permissive)
- Python support: unspecified
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: abandoned
- Downloads: 273.9K/month (top 15,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

cloudant python client, couchdb python library, nosql database client, cloudant api wrapper, document database python, couchdb query python, deprecated, nosql, couchdb

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