licensecheck
Output the licenses used by dependencies and check if these are compatible with the project license
Decision gist · record as of 2026-08-14
Yes. The tool is actively maintained, has no known vulnerabilities, low install friction, and solves a real compliance problem. Use it if you need to audit or report on dependency licenses; the MIT license and permissive runtime dependencies make it safe to add to any project.AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying
Before you install
- Requires Python 3.12 or later.
- Low friction install with 11 runtime dependencies, all permissively licensed.
- Active maintenance with a release 57 days ago and last commit on 2026-06-21.
License · maintenance · safety
MIT (permissive) — MIT license is permissive; you can use this tool freely in commercial and proprietary projects without restriction.
last release 2026-06-18 (57 days) · last repo commit 2026-06-21 · 114 stars
0 known vulnerabilities (OSV.dev, 2026-08-14) · 489,048 downloads/mo, #6,376 on PyPI
Alternatives
Verify before relying
pip install licensecheck
licensecheck
# or with options:
licensecheck --license MIT --format json- Whether the tool correctly identifies and interprets all SPDX license identifiers in practice.
- How the tool handles packages with missing or ambiguous license metadata.
- Performance characteristics when scanning projects with hundreds of transitive dependencies.
What it is and what it does
licensecheck is a command-line tool that reads your project's dependencies (from pyproject.toml or requirements files) and reports the license of each one, then checks whether those licenses are compatible with your project's declared license. It uses configurator, depgather, license-expression, and requests to gather package metadata and parse license strings, then outputs results as tables, JSON, CSV, HTML, or markdown.
The tool is designed for developers and teams who need to audit their dependency licenses for compliance or compatibility concerns. It supports filtering by license type, dependency groups, and extras, and can fail the check if incompatible licenses are found. The output includes explicit compatibility markers and can highlight only failing packages.
Use it for
- Audit all dependencies in a Python project to ensure their licenses are compatible with your project's license before release.
- Generate a license report in CSV or JSON format for legal or compliance documentation.
- Filter dependencies by license type (e.g., MIT, Apache) to identify which packages use specific license families.
- Check only development dependencies (via --groups) to separate runtime and dev-time license concerns.
- Integrate into CI/CD to fail the build if any dependency uses a license you've marked as incompatible.
Worth the install?
AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page. Verify before relying on it.
Yes.
The tool is actively maintained, has no known vulnerabilities, low install friction, and solves a real compliance problem. Use it if you need to audit or report on dependency licenses; the MIT license and permissive runtime dependencies make it safe to add to any project.
Install
licensecheck on PyPI
Before you install
Low friction install with 11 runtime dependencies, all permissively licensed. Active maintenance with a release 57 days ago and last commit on 2026-06-21.
Requires Python 3.12 or later.
License in practice
MIT license is permissive; you can use this tool freely in commercial and proprietary projects without restriction.
Quickstart
pip install licensecheck
licensecheck
# or with options:
licensecheck --license MIT --format jsonVerify before relying
- Whether the tool correctly identifies and interprets all SPDX license identifiers in practice.
- How the tool handles packages with missing or ambiguous license metadata.
- Performance characteristics when scanning projects with hundreds of transitive dependencies.
Package facts
| License | MIT permissive |
| Python support | Supports the current Python release >=3.12 |
| Install friction | Low. Pure-Python wheel |
| Runtime dependencies | 11 packagesconfiguratordepgatherlicense-expressionlogurumarkdownplatformdirspydanticrequests-cacherequestsrichtomli |
| Maintenance | Actively maintained 57 days since the last release |
| Last repo commit | |
| First released | |
| Downloads | 489,048 / month, #6,376 on PyPI 30-day window, as of 2026-08-14 |
| Known vulnerabilities | None known OSV.dev, checked 2026-08-14 |
| Classifiers | Development Status :: 5 - Production/StableEnvironment :: ConsoleEnvironment :: MacOS XEnvironment :: Win32 (MS Windows)Intended Audience :: DevelopersIntended Audience :: EducationNatural Language :: EnglishOperating System :: OS IndependentProgramming Language :: Python :: Implementation :: CPythonTopic :: SecurityTopic :: Software Development :: Libraries :: Python ModulesTopic :: Utilities |
Evidence: licensecheck-2026.0.8-py3-none-any.whl
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See also liccheck · pip-licenses-cli · pip-licenses-lib · depgather · pip-licenses · requirements-detector · boolean.py · certifi · johnnydep · flake8-requirements