---
id: lxml-html-clean
version: "0.4.5"
license: BSD-3-Clause
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: active
---

# lxml-html-clean — HTML cleaner from lxml project

License: permissive · Maintenance: active · Downloads: 20.5M/mo

## What it is and what it does

lxml_html_clean is a standalone HTML sanitization library extracted from lxml's original cleaner module. It uses a blocklist-based approach to remove unwanted HTML tags and attributes from user-supplied or untrusted content. The package depends only on lxml and installs as a pure Python wheel.

The package explicitly warns that it is not suitable for security-sensitive environments. Its URL parsing relies on Python's urllib.parse, which does not validate inputs, and a maliciously crafted URL could bypass the allowed-hosts check. If you need robust HTML sanitization for high-security contexts, the maintainers recommend alternatives like nh3.

Use it for:

- Sanitize user-submitted HTML in a blog or comment system where moderate filtering suffices
- Remove script tags and event handlers from HTML copied from untrusted web sources
- Clean up HTML content for display in a non-security-critical web application
- Strip formatting and styling from HTML while preserving structure for content migration

## Worth the install?

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

Cleans and sanitizes HTML by removing unwanted tags and attributes using a blocklist approach, extracted from lxml's original HTML cleaner module.

Yes, if you need basic HTML sanitization in a non-security-critical context. The package is actively maintained, has low install friction, and carries a permissive license. However, do not use it for security-sensitive applications—the maintainers explicitly recommend alternatives like nh3 for those cases. Verify that blocklist-based filtering meets your specific requirements.

## Install

pip install lxml-html-clean
uv add lxml-html-clean
poetry add lxml-html-clean

## Installing lxml-html-clean

Before you install: Low friction: pure Python wheel with a single runtime dependency on lxml. Actively maintained as of 2026-05-20 with recent releases.

License in practice: BSD-3-Clause permissive license allows commercial and private use with minimal restrictions; attribution required.

Quickstart:

pip install lxml_html_clean

from lxml_html_clean import Cleaner

cleaner = Cleaner()
clean_html = cleaner.clean_html('<p>Hello <script>alert(1)</script></p>')

Requires lxml, which may need compilation on some systems. Not recommended for security-sensitive applications—see package documentation for alternatives.

Verify before relying:

- Whether the blocklist approach provides adequate protection for your specific use case, given the package's own warning against security-sensitive environments
- Whether URL parsing via urllib.parse's non-validating functions poses a risk for your allowed-hosts configuration

## Package facts

- License: BSD-3-Clause (permissive)
- Python support: unspecified
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: active
- Downloads: 20.5M/month (top 5,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

html sanitization blocklist, remove html tags safely, html cleaner utility, strip dangerous html elements, html content filtering, html-sanitization, blocklist-based

[View on SkillFed](https://skillfed.io/packages/lxml-html-clean) · [View on PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/lxml-html-clean/)