cryptography

cryptography is a package which provides cryptographic recipes and primitives to Python developers.

cryptography Permissive license Apache-2.0 OR BSD-3-Clause Active ★ 7,699 v50.0.0 released 2026-07-31

Install

cryptography on PyPI

pip

pip install cryptography

uv

uv add cryptography

poetry

poetry add cryptography

Package facts

License	Apache-2.0 OR BSD-3-Clause (permissive)
Python support	supports the current Python release (!=3.9.0,!=3.9.1,>=3.9)
Install friction	medium — platform-specific wheel
Runtime dependencies	2 — cffi, typing-extensions
Maintenance	actively maintained — 13 days since the last release
Last repo commit	2026-08-13
First released	2014-01-08
Popularity	one of the 100 most-downloaded packages on PyPI (30-day window, as of 2026-08-13)
Known vulnerabilities	none known (OSV.dev, checked 2026-08-13)

Evidence: cryptography-50.0.0-cp311-abi3-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl; cryptography-50.0.0-cp311-abi3-manylinux2014_aarch64.manylinux_2_17_aarch64.whl; cryptography-50.0.0-cp311-abi3-manylinux2014_x86_64.manylinux_2_17_x86_64.whl; cryptography-50.0.0-cp311-abi3-manylinux_2_28_aarch64.whl; cryptography-50.0.0-cp311-abi3-manylinux_2_28_ppc64le.whl; cryptography-50.0.0-cp311-abi3-manylinux_2_28_x86_64.whl; cryptography-50.0.0-cp311-abi3-manylinux_2_31_armv7l.whl; cryptography-50.0.0-cp311-abi3-manylinux_2_34_aarch64.whl; cryptography-50.0.0-cp311-abi3-manylinux_2_34_ppc64le.whl; cryptography-50.0.0-cp311-abi3-manylinux_2_34_x86_64.whl; cryptography-50.0.0-cp311-abi3-musllinux_1_2_aarch64.whl; cryptography-50.0.0-cp311-abi3-musllinux_1_2_x86_64.whl; cryptography-50.0.0-cp311-abi3-win_amd64.whl; cryptography-50.0.0-cp314-cp314t-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl; cryptography-50.0.0-cp314-cp314t-manylinux2014_aarch64.manylinux_2_17_aarch64.whl; cryptography-50.0.0-cp314-cp314t-manylinux2014_x86_64.manylinux_2_17_x86_64.whl; cryptography-50.0.0-cp314-cp314t-manylinux_2_28_aarch64.whl; cryptography-50.0.0-cp314-cp314t-manylinux_2_28_ppc64le.whl; cryptography-50.0.0-cp314-cp314t-manylinux_2_28_x86_64.whl; cryptography-50.0.0-cp314-cp314t-manylinux_2_31_armv7l.whl

Development Status :: 5 - Production/StableIntended Audience :: DevelopersNatural Language :: EnglishOperating System :: MacOS :: MacOS XOperating System :: Microsoft :: WindowsOperating System :: POSIXOperating System :: POSIX :: BSDOperating System :: POSIX :: LinuxProgramming Language :: PythonProgramming Language :: Python :: 3Programming Language :: Python :: 3 :: OnlyProgramming Language :: Python :: 3.10Programming Language :: Python :: 3.11Programming Language :: Python :: 3.12Programming Language :: Python :: 3.13Programming Language :: Python :: 3.14Programming Language :: Python :: 3.9Programming Language :: Python :: Free Threading :: 3 - StableProgramming Language :: Python :: Implementation :: CPythonProgramming Language :: Python :: Implementation :: PyPyTopic :: Security :: Cryptography

About cryptography

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

pyca/cryptography

.. image:: https://img.shields.io/pypi/v/cryptography.svg :target: https://pypi.org/project/cryptography/ :alt: Latest Version

.. image:: https://readthedocs.org/projects/cryptography/badge/?version=latest :target: https://cryptography.io :alt: Latest Docs

.. image:: https://github.com/pyca/cryptography/actions/workflows/ci.yml/badge.svg :target: https://github.com/pyca/cryptography/actions/workflows/ci.yml?query=branch%3Amain

cryptography is a package which provides cryptographic recipes and primitives to Python developers. Our goal is for it to be your "cryptographic standard library". It supports Python 3.9+ and PyPy3 7.3.11+.

cryptography includes both high level recipes and low level interfaces to common cryptographic algorithms such as symmetric ciphers, message digests, and key derivation functions. For example, to encrypt something with cryptography's high level symmetric encryption recipe:

.. code-block:: pycon

&gt;&gt;&gt; from cryptography.fernet import Fernet
&gt;&gt;&gt; # Put this somewhere safe!
&gt;&gt;&gt; key = Fernet.generate_key()
&gt;&gt;&gt; f = Fernet(key)
&gt;&gt;&gt; token = f.encrypt(b"A really secret...

Read as markdown · JSON record · Source repository · 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

cryptography provides cryptographic recipes and primitives—symmetric ciphers, message digests, key derivation, and high-level encryption interfaces—for Python developers to build secure applications.

Medium install friction due to compiled dependencies (cffi), but well-mitigated by extensive wheel coverage across Python 3.9–3.14, multiple architectures (x86_64, aarch64, armv7l, ppc64le), and active maintenance (last release 13 days ago).

Dual-licensed under Apache-2.0 OR BSD-3-Clause (permissive); users may choose either license, both allowing commercial use and modification with minimal restrictions.

Usage

pip install cryptography

from cryptography.fernet import Fernet
key = Fernet.generate_key()
f = Fernet(key)
token = f.encrypt(b"secret message")
f.decrypt(token)

Requires Python 3.9+ (excluding 3.9.0 and 3.9.1); cffi compilation may need a C compiler and development headers on some platforms.

Verdict: cryptography is a production-stable, top-100 PyPI package with active maintenance, no known vulnerabilities, and permissive licensing. Medium install friction is offset by comprehensive wheel distribution and strong community backing; suitable for any application requiring cryptographic operations.

Needs verification

Whether cffi's build-time dependencies (C compiler, OpenSSL headers) are pre-satisfied in typical deployment environments
Performance characteristics and suitability for high-throughput cryptographic workloads compared to alternatives

symmetric encryption pythoncryptographic primitives libraryfernet encryptionmessage digest hashingkey derivation functionspython cryptography standard librarysecure data encryption