---
id: woothee
version: "1.10.1"
license: Apache License 2.0
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: dormant
---

# woothee — Cross-language UserAgent classifier library, python implementation

License: permissive · Maintenance: dormant · Downloads: 80.2K/mo

## What it is and what it does

Woothee is a Python user-agent string parser that extracts structured information from HTTP User-Agent headers. It identifies the browser name and version, operating system, device category (pc, smartphone, mobilephone, appliance, crawler, or misc), vendor, and OS version. The package provides two main functions: parse() for detailed extraction and is_crawler() for fast crawler detection.

The library depends only on six for Python 2/3 compatibility and ships as a pure-Python wheel with no compiled dependencies. It's designed for web applications that need to classify incoming requests by client type—useful in analytics, content adaptation, or bot filtering. The package has been stable since 2015 but receives no active maintenance; its user-agent patterns reflect knowledge frozen around 2019.

Use it for:

- Classify incoming HTTP requests by browser and OS in web analytics or logging pipelines.
- Detect crawler traffic (bots, search engines) to apply different rate limits or caching rules.
- Adapt web content or API responses based on detected device category (mobile vs. desktop).
- Build device-aware feature flags or A/B testing logic without external services.
- Generate reports on user-agent distribution across a web application's traffic.

## Worth the install?

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

Woothee parses user-agent strings to identify browsers, operating systems, devices, and crawlers, returning structured data with name, version, OS, category, and vendor information.

Yes, if your user-agent patterns are stable and pre-2019. The package is lightweight, dependency-minimal, and has no known vulnerabilities. However, it is dormant—no updates since 2019—so it will not recognize modern browsers, crawlers, or OS releases. Install only if you can tolerate a frozen knowledge base or if you're parsing historical data. For real-time classification of current clients, consider an actively maintained alternative.

## Install

pip install woothee
uv add woothee
poetry add woothee

## Installing woothee

Before you install: Low install friction with a single lightweight dependency (six). Maintenance is dormant—last release was 2019-08-08 and no commits since 2024-07-09—but the package is marked Production/Stable and has seen no recent security issues.

License in practice: Licensed under Apache License 2.0 (permissive), allowing use in commercial and open-source projects with minimal restrictions; you must include a copy of the license and state significant changes.

Quickstart:

pip install woothee

import woothee
result = woothee.parse("Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/4.0)")
print(result['name'], result['os'], result['version'])

Verify before relying:

- Whether the package's user-agent database is current enough for modern browsers and crawlers released after 2019.
- Performance characteristics when parsing large volumes of user-agent strings.

## Package facts

- License: Apache License 2.0 (permissive)
- Python support: unspecified
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: dormant
- Downloads: 80.2K/month (top 15,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

user-agent parser, browser detection, user agent string parsing, device classifier, crawler detection, os detection from user agent, web client identification, user-agent-parsing, browser-detection, web-analytics

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