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OpenAI Python SDK

The official Python client for the OpenAI API.

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About

The official OpenAI Python SDK (pip install openai): the canonical client for the Chat Completions, Responses, Assistants, Images, Audio, Embeddings, and Batch APIs, with typed models, streaming, retries, and async support. If you call OpenAI from Python, this is almost certainly what you use — 295.9M PyPI downloads/month makes it one of the most-installed Python packages in existence. 31.8k stars, Apache-2.0. It's a thin, faithful client (new API features land here first), not a framework — pair it with LiteLLM or a gateway for multi-provider work.

What it can do

  • **Full API coverage**: chat, responses, images, audio, embeddings, files, batches
  • **Typed + streaming**: pydantic-typed models, sync and async clients
  • **Retries/timeouts**: built-in resilience primitives
  • **First to update**: new OpenAI features ship here before third-party SDKs

Setup

```bash

pip install openai

export OPENAI_API_KEY="sk-..."

```

```python

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI()

resp = client.chat.completions.create(model="gpt-4o-mini", messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hi"}])

print(resp.choices[0].message.content)

```

Docs: platform.openai.com/docs.

Prerequisites

Python 3.8+. An OpenAI API key.

Use cases

API clientchatembeddingsautomation

Works with

customGeneric APIClaude Code

Trust score — 9/10

/10 trustVerified

Scored 9/10 (verified tier, metrics-v1). Evidence: 31,830 GitHub stars (log-scaled vs catalog peers); blended with ~295,856,631 monthly package downloads; last push 0d ago; 96 releases/12mo; 137 open issues. Manual review: official SDK, new features land here first; 31.8k stars, 295.9M PyPI/mo; thin client by design, OpenAI(-compatible) only. License: Apache-2.0.

★ 31,830 GitHub stars

How the trust score is built

Full methodology →
Adoption · stars/downloads, log-scaled vs peers
8.9/10
Maintenance · recency, releases, issue load
9.8/10
Openness · license + docs
10.0/10
Manual review · sanity read + red-flag check
9.0/10
  • · 31,830 GitHub stars (log-scaled vs catalog peers)
  • · blended with ~295,856,631 monthly package downloads
  • · last push 0d ago; 96 releases/12mo; 137 open issues
  • · manual review: official SDK, new features land here first; 31.8k stars, 295.9M PyPI/mo; thin client by design, OpenAI(-compatible) only

Sources

Every fact above was checked against these sources. Where a claim comes from the provider and couldn't be independently verified, the text says so.