Installation
You can install cryptography
with pip
:
$ pip install cryptography
If this does not work please upgrade your pip first, as that is the single most common cause of installation problems.
Supported platforms
Currently we test cryptography
on Python 3.7+ and PyPy3 7.3.11+ on these
operating systems.
x86-64 RHEL 8.x
x86-64 CentOS 9 Stream
x86-64 Fedora (latest)
x86-64 macOS 13 Ventura and ARM64 macOS 14 Sonoma
x86-64 Ubuntu 20.04, 22.04, 24.04, rolling
ARM64 Ubuntu rolling
x86-64 Debian Bullseye (11.x), Bookworm (12.x), Trixie (13.x), and Sid (unstable)
x86-64 and ARM64 Alpine (latest)
32-bit and 64-bit Python on 64-bit Windows Server 2022
We test compiling with clang
as well as gcc
and use the following
OpenSSL releases in addition to distribution provided releases from the
above supported platforms:
OpenSSL 3.0-latest
OpenSSL 3.1-latest
OpenSSL 3.2-latest
OpenSSL 3.3-latest
We also test against the latest commit of BoringSSL as well as versions of
LibreSSL that are receiving security support at the time of a given
cryptography
release.
Building cryptography on Windows
The wheel package on Windows is a statically linked build (as of 0.5) so all
dependencies are included. To install cryptography
, you will typically
just run
$ pip install cryptography
If you prefer to compile it yourself you’ll need to have OpenSSL installed.
You can compile OpenSSL yourself as well or use a binary distribution.
Be sure to download the proper version for your architecture and Python
(VC2015 is required for 3.7 and above). Wherever you place your copy of OpenSSL
you’ll need to set the OPENSSL_DIR
environment variable to include the
proper location. For example:
C:\> \path\to\vcvarsall.bat x86_amd64
C:\> set OPENSSL_DIR=C:\OpenSSL-win64
C:\> pip install cryptography
You will also need to have Rust installed and available.
If you need to rebuild cryptography
for any reason be sure to clear the
local wheel cache.
Building cryptography on Linux
Note
You should upgrade pip and attempt to install cryptography
again
before following the instructions to compile it below. Most Linux
platforms will receive a binary wheel and require no compiler if you have
an updated pip
!
cryptography
ships manylinux
wheels (as of 2.0) so all dependencies
are included. For users on pip 19.3 or above running on a manylinux2014
(or greater) compatible distribution (or pip 21.2.4 for musllinux
) all
you should need to do is:
$ pip install cryptography
If you want to compile cryptography
yourself you’ll need a C compiler, a
Rust compiler, headers for Python (if you’re not using pypy
), and headers
for the OpenSSL and libffi
libraries available on your system.
On all Linux distributions you will need to have Rust installed and available.
Alpine
Warning
The Rust available by default in Alpine < 3.17 is older than the minimum supported version. See the Rust installation instructions for information about installing a newer Rust.
$ sudo apk add gcc musl-dev python3-dev libffi-dev openssl-dev cargo pkgconfig
If you get an error with openssl-dev
you may have to use libressl-dev
.
Debian/Ubuntu
Warning
The Rust available in Debian versions prior to Bookworm are older than the minimum supported version. See the Rust installation instructions for information about installing a newer Rust.
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev libffi-dev \
python3-dev cargo pkg-config
Fedora/RHEL/CentOS
Warning
For RHEL and CentOS you must be on version 8.8 or newer for the command below to install a sufficiently new Rust. If your Rust is less than 1.65.0 please see the Rust installation instructions for information about installing a newer Rust.
$ sudo dnf install redhat-rpm-config gcc libffi-devel python3-devel \
openssl-devel cargo pkg-config
Building
You should now be able to build and install cryptography. To avoid getting
the pre-built wheel on manylinux
compatible distributions you’ll need to
use --no-binary
.
$ pip install cryptography --no-binary cryptography
Using your own OpenSSL on Linux
Python links to OpenSSL for its own purposes and this can sometimes cause problems when you wish to use a different version of OpenSSL with cryptography. If you want to use cryptography with your own build of OpenSSL you will need to make sure that the build is configured correctly so that your version of OpenSSL doesn’t conflict with Python’s.
The options you need to add allow the linker to identify every symbol correctly even when multiple versions of the library are linked into the same program. If you are using your distribution’s source packages these will probably be patched in for you already, otherwise you’ll need to use options something like this when configuring OpenSSL:
$ ./config -Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions -fPIC shared
Static Wheels
Cryptography ships statically-linked wheels for macOS, Windows, and Linux (via
manylinux
and musllinux
). This allows compatible environments to use
the most recent OpenSSL, regardless of what is shipped by default on those
platforms.
If you are using a platform not covered by our wheels, you can build your own statically-linked wheels that will work on your own systems. This will allow you to continue to use relatively old Linux distributions (such as LTS releases), while making sure you have the most recent OpenSSL available to your Python programs.
To do so, you should find yourself a machine that is as similar as possible to your target environment (e.g. your production environment): for example, spin up a new cloud server running your target Linux distribution. On this machine, install the Cryptography dependencies as mentioned in Building cryptography on Linux. Please also make sure you have virtualenv installed: this should be available from your system package manager.
Then, paste the following into a shell script. You’ll need to populate the
OPENSSL_VERSION
variable. To do that, visit openssl.org and find the
latest non-FIPS release version number, then set the string appropriately. For
example, for OpenSSL 1.1.1k, use OPENSSL_VERSION="1.1.1k"
.
When this shell script is complete, you’ll find a collection of wheel files in
a directory called wheelhouse
. These wheels can be installed by a
sufficiently-recent version of pip
. The Cryptography wheel in this
directory contains a statically-linked OpenSSL binding, which ensures that you
have access to the most-recent OpenSSL releases without corrupting your system
dependencies.
set -e
OPENSSL_VERSION="VERSIONGOESHERE"
CWD=$(pwd)
virtualenv env
. env/bin/activate
pip install -U setuptools
pip install -U wheel pip
curl -O https://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-${OPENSSL_VERSION}.tar.gz
tar xvf openssl-${OPENSSL_VERSION}.tar.gz
cd openssl-${OPENSSL_VERSION}
./config no-shared no-ssl2 no-ssl3 -fPIC --prefix=${CWD}/openssl
make && make install
cd ..
OPENSSL_DIR="${CWD}/openssl" pip wheel --no-cache-dir --no-binary cryptography cryptography
Building cryptography on macOS
Note
If installation gives a fatal error: 'openssl/aes.h' file not found
see the FAQ for information about how to fix this issue.
The wheel package on macOS is a statically linked build (as of 1.0.1) so for users with pip 8 or above you only need one step:
$ pip install cryptography
If you want to build cryptography yourself or are on an older macOS version, cryptography requires the presence of a C compiler, development headers, and the proper libraries. On macOS much of this is provided by Apple’s Xcode development tools. To install the Xcode command line tools (on macOS 10.10+) open a terminal window and run:
$ xcode-select --install
This will install a compiler (clang) along with (most of) the required development headers.
You will also need to have Rust installed and
available, which can be obtained from Homebrew,
MacPorts, or directly from the Rust website. If you are linking against a
universal2
archive of OpenSSL, the minimum supported Rust version is
1.66.0.
Finally you need OpenSSL, which you can obtain from Homebrew or MacPorts. Cryptography does not support the OpenSSL/LibreSSL libraries Apple ships in its base operating system.
To build cryptography and dynamically link it:
$ brew install openssl@3 rust
$ env OPENSSL_DIR="$(brew --prefix openssl@3)" pip install cryptography
$ sudo port install openssl rust
$ env OPENSSL_DIR="-L/opt/local" pip install cryptography
You can also build cryptography statically:
$ brew install openssl@3 rust
$ env OPENSSL_STATIC=1 OPENSSL_DIR="$(brew --prefix openssl@3)" pip install cryptography
$ sudo port install openssl rust
$ env OPENSSL_STATIC=1 OPENSSL_DIR="/opt/local" pip install cryptography
If you need to rebuild cryptography
for any reason be sure to clear the
local wheel cache.
Rust
Note
If you are using Linux, then you should upgrade pip (in
a virtual environment!) and attempt to install cryptography
again before
trying to install the Rust toolchain. On most Linux distributions, the latest
version of pip
will be able to install a binary wheel, so you won’t need
a Rust toolchain.
Building cryptography
requires having a working Rust toolchain. The current
minimum supported Rust version is 1.65.0. This is newer than the Rust some
package managers ship, so users may need to install with the
instructions below.
Instructions for installing Rust can be found on the Rust Project’s website.
We recommend installing Rust with rustup
(as documented by the Rust
Project) in order to ensure you have a recent version.
Rust is only required when building cryptography
, meaning that you may
install it for the duration of your pip install
command and then remove it
from a system. A Rust toolchain is not required to use cryptography
. In
deployments such as docker
, you may use a multi-stage Dockerfile
where
you install Rust during the build phase but do not install it in the runtime
image. This is the same as the C compiler toolchain which is also required to
build cryptography
, but not afterwards.