---
id: pycountry
version: "26.2.16"
license: LGPL-2.1-only
license_treatment: copyleft
maintenance: active
---

# pycountry — ISO country, subdivision, language, currency and script definitions and their translations

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

## Install

pip install pycountry
uv add pycountry
poetry add pycountry

## Description

###########
 pycountry
###########

pycountry provides the ISO databases for the standards:

-  `639-3 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_639-3>`_ Languages
-  `3166 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166>`_ Codes for
   representation of names of countries and their subdivisions
-  `3166-1 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1>`_ Countries
-  `3166-3 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-3>`_ Deleted
   countries
-  `3166-2 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-2>`_ Subdivisions of
   countries
-  `4217 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_4217>`_ Currencies
-  `15924 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_15924>`_ Scripts

The package includes a copy from Debian's `pkg-isocodes
<https://salsa.debian.org/iso-codes-team/iso-codes>`_ and makes the data
accessible through a Python API.

Translation files for the various strings are included as well.

********************
 Data update policy
********************

No changes to the data will be accepted into pycountry. This is a pure
wrapper around the ISO standard using the ``pkg-isocodes`` database from
Debian *as is*. If you need changes to the political situation in the
world, please talk to the ISO or Debian people, not...

## AI interpretation — verify before relying

pycountry provides Python access to ISO standard databases for countries, subdivisions, languages, currencies, and scripts, bundling Debian's pkg-isocodes data with a query API that supports exact lookups and fuzzy search.

Verdict: pycountry is a stable, well-maintained reference library for ISO standard data with zero dependencies and no known vulnerabilities. Its copyleft license is permissive for most use cases. Recommended for applications needing authoritative country, language, currency, or script metadata with fuzzy-search capability.

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