How can I install pip on Windows?

Question

Python 2.7.9+ and 3.4+

Good news! Python 3.4 (released March 2014) and Python 2.7.9 (released December 2014) ship with Pip. This is the best feature of any Python release. It makes the community's wealth of libraries accessible to everyone. Newbies are no longer excluded from using community libraries by the prohibitive difficulty of setup. In shipping with a package manager, Python joins Ruby, Node.js, Haskell, Perl, Go—almost every other contemporary language with a majority open-source community. Thank you, Python.

If you do find that pip is not available when using Python 3.4+ or Python 2.7.9+, simply execute e.g.:

py -3 -m ensurepip

Of course, that doesn't mean Python packaging is problem solved. The experience remains frustrating. I discuss this in the Stack Overflow question Does Python have a package/module management system?.

And, alas for everyone using Python 2.7.8 or earlier (a sizable portion of the community). There's no plan to ship Pip to you. Manual instructions follow.

Python 2 ≤ 2.7.8 and Python 3 ≤ 3.3

Flying in the face of its 'batteries included' motto, Python ships without a package manager. To make matters worse, Pip was—until recently—ironically difficult to install.

Official instructions

Per https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/installing/#do-i-need-to-install-pip:

Download get-pip.py, being careful to save it as a .py file rather than .txt. Then, run it from the command prompt:

python get-pip.py

You possibly need an administrator command prompt to do this. Follow Start a Command Prompt as an Administrator (Microsoft TechNet).

This installs the pip package, which (in Windows) contains ...\Scripts\pip.exe that path must be in PATH environment variable to use pip from the command line (see the second part of 'Alternative Instructions' for adding it to your PATH,

Alternative instructions

The official documentation tells users to install Pip and each of its dependencies from source. That's tedious for the experienced and prohibitively difficult for newbies.

For our sake, Christoph Gohlke prepares Windows installers (.msi) for popular Python packages. He builds installers for all Python versions, both 32 and 64 bit. You need to:

1. Install setuptools
2. Install pip

For me, this installed Pip at C:\Python27\Scripts\pip.exe. Find pip.exe on your computer, then add its folder (for example, C:\Python27\Scripts) to your path (Start / Edit environment variables). Now you should be able to run pip from the command line. Try installing a package:

pip install httpie

There you go (hopefully)! Solutions for common problems are given below:

Proxy problems

If you work in an office, you might be behind an HTTP proxy. If so, set the environment variables http_proxy and https_proxy. Most Python applications (and other free software) respect these. Example syntax:

http://proxy_url:port
http://username:password@proxy_url:port

If you're really unlucky, your proxy might be a Microsoft NTLM proxy. Free software can't cope. The only solution is to install a free software friendly proxy that forwards to the nasty proxy. http://cntlm.sourceforge.net/

Unable to find vcvarsall.bat

Python modules can be partly written in C or C++. Pip tries to compile from source. If you don't have a C/C++ compiler installed and configured, you'll see this cryptic error message.

Error: Unable to find vcvarsall.bat

You can fix that by installing a C++ compiler such as MinGW or Visual C++. Microsoft actually ships one specifically for use with Python. Or try Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler for Python 2.7.

Often though it's easier to check Christoph's site for your package.

-- Outdated -- use distribute, not setuptools as described here. --
-- Outdated #2 -- use setuptools as distribute is deprecated.

As you mentioned pip doesn't include an independent installer, but you can install it with its predecessor easy_install.

So:

1. Download the last pip version from here: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pip#downloads
2. Uncompress it
3. Download the last easy installer for Windows: (download the .exe at the bottom of http://pypi.python.org/pypi/setuptools ). Install it.
4. copy the uncompressed pip folder content into C:\Python2x\ folder (don't copy the whole folder into it, just the content), because python command doesn't work outside C:\Python2x folder and then run: python setup.py install
5. Add your python C:\Python2x\Scripts to the path

You are done.

Now you can use pip install package to easily install packages as in Linux :)

2014 UPDATE:

1) If you have installed Python 3.4 or later, pip is included with Python and should already be working on your system.

2) If you are running a version below Python 3.4 or if pip was not installed with Python 3.4 for some reason, then you'd probably use pip's official installation script get-pip.py. The pip installer now grabs setuptools for you, and works regardless of architecture (32-bit or 64-bit).

The installation instructions are detailed here and involve:

To install or upgrade pip, securely download get-pip.py.

Then run the following (which may require administrator access):

python get-pip.py

To upgrade an existing setuptools (or distribute), run pip install -U setuptools

I'll leave the two sets of old instructions below for posterity.

OLD Answers:

For Windows editions of the 64 bit variety - 64-bit Windows + Python used to require a separate installation method due to ez_setup, but I've tested the new distribute method on 64-bit Windows running 32-bit Python and 64-bit Python, and you can now use the same method for all versions of Windows/Python 2.7X:

OLD Method 2 using distribute:

1. Download distribute - I threw mine in C:\Python27\Scripts (feel free to create a Scripts directory if it doesn't exist.
2. Open up a command prompt (on Windows you should check out conemu2 if you don't use PowerShell) and change (cd) to the directory you've downloaded distribute_setup.py to.
3. Run distribute_setup: python distribute_setup.py (This will not work if your python installation directory is not added to your path - go here for help)
4. Change the current directory to the Scripts directory for your Python installation (C:\Python27\Scripts) or add that directory, as well as the Python base installation directory to your %PATH% environment variable.
5. Install pip using the newly installed setuptools: easy_install pip

The last step will not work unless you're either in the directory easy_install.exe is located in (C:\Python27\Scripts would be the default for Python 2.7), or you have that directory added to your path.

OLD Method 1 using ez_setup:

from the setuptools page --

Download ez_setup.py and run it; it will download the appropriate .egg file and install it for you. (Currently, the provided .exe installer does not support 64-bit versions of Python for Windows, due to a distutils installer compatibility issue.

After this, you may continue with:

2. Add c:\Python2x\Scripts to the Windows path (replace the x in Python2x with the actual version number you have installed)
3. Open a new (!) DOS prompt. From there run easy_install pip

2016+ Update:

These answers are outdated or otherwise wordy and difficult.

If you've got Python 3.4+ or 2.7.9+, it will be installed by default on Windows. Otherwise, in short:

1. Download the pip installer: https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py
2. If paranoid, inspect file to confirm it isn't malicious (must b64 decode).
3. Open a console in the download folder as Admin and run get-pip.py. Alternatively, right-click its icon in Explorer and choose the "run as Admin...".

The new binaries pip.exe (and the deprecated easy_install.exe) will be found in the "%ProgramFiles%\PythonXX\Scripts" folder (or similar), which is often not in your PATH variable. I recommend adding it.

Python 3.4, which was released in March 2014, comes with pip included:
http://docs.python.org/3.4/whatsnew/3.4.html
So, since the release of Python 3.4, the up-to-date way to install pip on Windows is to just install Python.

The recommended way to use it is to call it as a module, especially with multiple python distributions or versions installed, to guarantee packages go to the correct place:
python -m pip install --upgrade packageXYZ

https://docs.python.org/3/installing/#work-with-multiple-versions-of-python-installed-in-parallel

When I have to use Windows, I use ActivePython, which automatically adds everything to your PATH and includes a package manager called PyPM which provides binary package management making it faster and simpler to install packages.

pip and easy_install aren't exactly the same thing, so there are some things you can get through pip but not easy_install and vice versa.

My recommendation is that you get ActivePython Community Edition and don't worry about the huge hassle of getting everything set up for Python on Windows. Then, you can just use pypm.

In case you want to use pip you have to check the PyPM option in the ActiveState installer. After installation you only need to logoff and log on again, and pip will be available on the commandline, because it is contained in the ActiveState installer PyPM option and the paths have been set by the installer for you already. PyPM will also be available, but you do not have to use it.