---
id: pytest-test-groups
version: "1.2.1"
license: The MIT License (MIT) Copyright (c) 2016 Mark Adams Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"),… (full text in the JSON record)
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: aging
---

# pytest-test-groups — A Pytest plugin for running a subset of your tests by splitting them in to equally sized groups.

License: permissive · Maintenance: aging · Downloads: 1.6M/mo

## What it is and what it does

pytest-test-groups is a pytest plugin that partitions your test suite into equally-sized groups, allowing you to run a single group at a time. This is primarily designed for CI environments where you want to distribute test execution across multiple workers or machines—instead of running all tests on one worker, you can split them into groups and have multiple CI jobs each run one group in parallel, reducing overall test time.

The plugin works by adding command-line options to pytest: you specify a total group count and which group number to run. It can partition tests by individual test items (the default) or by filename, and supports pseudo-random assignment of tests to groups via a seed parameter. It depends only on pytest and has low install friction.

Use it for:

- Distribute a large test suite across multiple CI workers to reduce total test time.
- Split long-running test jobs into smaller parallel jobs in GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or similar platforms.
- Run a specific subset of tests locally for debugging without running the entire suite.
- Balance test load across CI agents when test execution time varies significantly between groups.

## Worth the install?

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

pytest-test-groups is a pytest plugin that splits your test suite into equally-sized groups so you can run a specific group in isolation, useful for parallelizing test execution across CI workers.

Yes, if you need to parallelize test execution in CI. The plugin is stable (Production/Stable classifier), has no known vulnerabilities, and low install friction. However, maintenance is aging—last commit was 2025-07-29. Verify compatibility with your pytest and Python versions before adopting.

## Install

pip install pytest-test-groups
uv add pytest-test-groups
poetry add pytest-test-groups

## Installing pytest-test-groups

Before you install: Low install friction; depends only on pytest. Maintenance status is aging—last commit was 2025-07-29, though the repository remains active and not archived.

License in practice: MIT license (permissive). You may use, modify, and distribute this package freely in commercial or private projects, provided you include the license notice.

Quickstart:

pip install pytest-test-groups

# Split tests into 10 groups and run group 2
pytest --test-group-count 10 --test-group=2

Verify before relying:

- Whether the aging maintenance status affects compatibility with recent pytest versions or Python releases.
- How test grouping behaves with parameterized tests or dynamic test discovery.
- Real-world performance impact when distributing tests across many CI workers.

## Package facts

- License: The MIT License (MIT) Copyright (c) 2016 Mark Adams Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"),… (full text in the JSON record) (permissive)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: aging
- Downloads: 1.6M/month (top 5,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

pytest test grouping, split tests into groups, parallel test execution, pytest ci parallelization, distribute tests across workers, pytest test partitioning, ci-parallelization, test-distribution

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