---
id: html5lib
version: "1.1"
license: MIT License
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: active
---

# html5lib — HTML parser based on the WHATWG HTML specification

License: permissive · Maintenance: active · Popularity: top 1,000 on PyPI

## Install

pip install html5lib
uv add html5lib
poetry add html5lib

## Description

html5lib
========

.. image:: https://travis-ci.org/html5lib/html5lib-python.svg?branch=master
    :target: https://travis-ci.org/html5lib/html5lib-python


html5lib is a pure-python library for parsing HTML. It is designed to
conform to the WHATWG HTML specification, as is implemented by all major
web browsers.


Usage
-----

Simple usage follows this pattern:

.. code-block:: python

  import html5lib
  with open("mydocument.html", "rb") as f:
      document = html5lib.parse(f)

or:

.. code-block:: python

  import html5lib
  document = html5lib.parse("<p>Hello World!")

By default, the ``document`` will be an ``xml.etree`` element instance.
Whenever possible, html5lib chooses the accelerated ``ElementTree``
implementation (i.e. ``xml.etree.cElementTree`` on Python 2.x).

Two other tree types are supported: ``xml.dom.minidom`` and
``lxml.etree``. To use an alternative format, specify the name of
a treebuilder:

.. code-block:: python

  import html5lib
  with open("mydocument.html", "rb") as f:
      lxml_etree_document = html5lib.parse(f, treebuilder="lxml")

When using with ``urllib2`` (Python 2), the charset from HTTP should be
pass into html5lib as follows:

.....

## AI interpretation — verify before relying

html5lib is a pure-Python HTML parser that conforms to the WHATWG HTML specification, parsing HTML documents into tree structures compatible with xml.etree, xml.dom.minidom, or lxml.

Verdict: html5lib is a stable, actively maintained HTML parser with minimal dependencies and no known vulnerabilities. The long gap since the last release (2020) is offset by recent repository activity. It's suitable for production use where WHATWG-compliant HTML parsing is needed, though users should verify ongoing maintenance aligns with their support expectations.

[View on SkillFed](https://skillfed.io/packages/html5lib) · [View on PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/html5lib/)