---
id: kazoo
version: "2.11.0"
license: Apache 2.0
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: active
---

# kazoo — "Higher Level Zookeeper Client"

License: permissive · Maintenance: active · Downloads: 6.1M/mo

## What it is and what it does

Kazoo is a Python client library that wraps Apache ZooKeeper's lower-level protocol with a more Pythonic, higher-level API. It handles the complexity of connecting to ZooKeeper clusters, managing sessions, and implementing common distributed patterns like leader election, distributed locks, and configuration management. The package has no runtime dependencies and installs cleanly as a pure-Python wheel.

Developers use Kazoo when building distributed systems that need coordination across multiple nodes—for example, electing a leader among service instances, managing shared configuration that updates across a cluster, or implementing distributed locks for resource access. The library abstracts away ZooKeeper's connection management and event handling, letting you focus on the coordination logic itself.

Use it for:

- Implement distributed leader election to ensure only one instance of a service runs at a time across a cluster
- Manage shared configuration that multiple services read and watch for changes in real time
- Build distributed locks to coordinate access to shared resources or prevent concurrent operations
- Implement service discovery by registering and discovering service endpoints in a ZooKeeper ensemble
- Coordinate job scheduling or task distribution across multiple worker nodes

## Worth the install?

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

Kazoo provides a higher-level Python client API for Apache ZooKeeper, simplifying coordination, configuration management, and distributed locking operations.

Yes. Kazoo is actively maintained, has no external dependencies, and is the standard Python client for ZooKeeper. It's production-stable (Development Status 5), supports modern Python versions (3.8–3.14), and carries no known security vulnerabilities. Install it if you're building on ZooKeeper for coordination; skip it only if you don't need ZooKeeper or prefer a different coordination backend.

## Install

pip install kazoo
uv add kazoo
poetry add kazoo

## Installing kazoo

Before you install: Low friction installation with no runtime dependencies. Actively maintained as of 2026-03-21 with recent commits addressing Python 3.13 and 3.14 support, SNI support, and bug fixes.

License in practice: Apache 2.0 is permissive; you can use this package in commercial and proprietary projects with minimal restrictions, though you must include a copy of the license and note any modifications.

Quickstart:

pip install kazoo

from kazoo.client import KazooClient

zk = KazooClient(hosts='localhost')
zk.start()
zk.create('/my_node', b'data')
zk.stop()

Requires a running Apache ZooKeeper server instance to connect to.

Verify before relying:

- Whether SNI support added in 2.11.0 covers all modern TLS/SSL scenarios for production deployments
- Performance characteristics and scalability limits for high-throughput distributed locking scenarios
- Compatibility with specific ZooKeeper server versions beyond what the changelog indicates

## Package facts

- License: Apache 2.0 (permissive)
- Python support: unspecified
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: active
- Downloads: 6.1M/month (top 5,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

zookeeper python client, distributed coordination library, zookeeper leader election, distributed locking python, zookeeper configuration management, python zk client, service discovery zookeeper, zookeeper, coordination, distributed-systems

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