---
id: levenshtein
version: "0.27.4"
license: GPL-2.0-or-later
license_treatment: copyleft
maintenance: active
---

# Levenshtein — Python extension for computing string edit distances and similarities.

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

## Install

pip install levenshtein
uv add levenshtein
poetry add levenshtein

## Description

# Levenshtein

<p>
  <a href="https://github.com/rapidfuzz/Levenshtein/actions">
    <img src="https://github.com/rapidfuzz/Levenshtein/workflows/Build/badge.svg"
         alt="Continuous Integration">
  </a>
  <a href="https://pypi.org/project/levenshtein/">
    <img src="https://img.shields.io/pypi/v/levenshtein"
         alt="PyPI package version">
  </a>
  <a href="https://www.python.org">
    <img src="https://img.shields.io/pypi/pyversions/levenshtein"
         alt="Python versions">
  </a>
  <a href="https://rapidfuzz.github.io/Levenshtein">
    <img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/-documentation-blue"
         alt="Documentation">
  </a>
  <a href="https://github.com/rapidfuzz/Levenshtein/blob/main/LICENSE">
    <img src="https://img.shields.io/github/license/rapidfuzz/Levenshtein"
         alt="GitHub license">
  </a>
</p>

## Introduction
The Levenshtein Python C extension module contains functions for fast
computation of:

* Levenshtein (edit) distance, and edit operations
* string similarity
* approximate median strings, and generally string averaging
* string sequence and set similarity

## Requirements
* Python 3.10 or later

## Installation
```bash
pip install...

## AI interpretation — verify before relying

Levenshtein computes string edit distances, similarities, and related operations like approximate median strings using a fast C extension, with support for sequence and set comparisons.

Verdict: Levenshtein is a well-maintained, actively developed library (398 GitHub stars, recent release) with no known vulnerabilities and broad platform support via prebuilt wheels. Its GPL-2.0-or-later copyleft license requires careful review if you plan to redistribute or modify the code. Medium install friction is offset by availability of compiled binaries for all major platforms and Python versions.

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