cryptography

What it is and what it does

cryptography is a mature, widely-used Python library that brings cryptographic algorithms and recipes to application developers. It sits between raw OpenSSL bindings and application code, offering both high-level convenience functions (like Fernet for symmetric encryption) and low-level access to algorithms like AES, SHA, PBKDF2, and key exchange primitives. The library wraps compiled cryptographic code via cffi, which means installation requires a working C compiler or pre-built wheels for your platform—wheels are available for most common architectures (x86_64, ARM, PowerPC, Windows, macOS, Linux variants).

The package is designed to be a cryptographic standard library for Python: it handles the complexity of safe key generation, encryption, decryption, and authentication so developers don't have to roll their own. It supports Python 3.9+ and PyPy3, and is actively maintained by the Python Cryptographic Authority (pyca). With no known vulnerabilities and permissive dual licensing, it is production-ready and widely trusted in the ecosystem.

Use it for

• Encrypt and decrypt sensitive data at rest using high-level Fernet symmetric encryption
• Generate and manage cryptographic keys securely for authentication and encryption workflows
• Compute message digests and HMACs for data integrity verification and password hashing
• Implement TLS/SSL certificate handling and key derivation for secure communications
• Build authentication systems that require secure token generation and validation

Worth the install?

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Install

cryptography on PyPI

Before you install

Medium install friction due to compiled dependencies (cffi), but wheels are widely available across platforms and architectures. Active maintenance with recent releases; last commit 2026-08-13 and 14 days since latest release indicate steady development.

Requires Python 3.9+ (excluding 3.9.0 and 3.9.1); compiled dependency cffi must be available or installable on your platform.

License in practice

Dual-licensed under Apache-2.0 OR BSD-3-Clause (permissive). Either license permits commercial and private use with minimal restrictions, making the package safe for most projects.

Quickstart

pip install cryptography

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

Package facts

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

Tags

More Cryptography packages

See also django-cryptography-django5 · fernet · tink · django-cryptography · pycryptodomex · django-fernet-fields-v2 · aws-cryptographic-material-providers · django-cryptography-5 · unicrypto · python-olm