This package contains Python bindings for ØMQ. ØMQ is a lightweight and fast messaging implementation.

PyZMQ should work with any Python ≥ 2.6 (including Python 3), as well as PyPy. The Cython backend used by CPython supports libzmq ≥ 2.1.4 (including 3.2.x), but the CFFI backend used by PyPy only supports libzmq ≥ 3.2.2.

Current release of pyzmq is 13.1.0, and targets libzmq-3.2.2. For libzmq 2.0.x, use pyzmq release 2.0.10.1 or the 2.0.x development branch. PyZMQ (on CPython via Cython) continues to support libzmq ≥ 2.1.4.

pyzmq-2.1.11 was the last version of pyzmq to support Python 2.5, and pyzmq ≥ 2.2.0 requires Python ≥ 2.6. pyzmq-13.0.0 introduces PyPy support via CFFI, which only supports libzmq-3.2.2 and newer.

PyZMQ releases ≤ 2.2.0 matched libzmq versioning, but this will no longer be the case. To avoid confusion with the contemporary libzmq-3.2 major version release, PyZMQ is jumping to 13.0 (it will be the thirteenth release, so why not?). PyZMQ ≥ 13.0 will follow semantic versioning conventions accounting only for PyZMQ itself.

For a summary of changes to pyzmq, see our changelog.

PyZMQ ≥ 2.2.0 fully supports the 3.x API of libzmq, developed at zeromq/libzmq. No code to change, no flags to pass, just build pyzmq against libzmq3 and it should work.

PyZMQ on PyPy only supports the 3.x API of libzmq.

See PyZMQ's Sphinx-generated documentation on GitHub for API details, and some notes on Python and Cython development. If you want to learn about using ØMQ in general, the excellent ØMQ Guide is the place to start, which has a Python version of every example. We also have some information on our wiki

Unless you specifically want to develop PyZMQ, we recommend downloading the PyZMQ source code, eggs, or MSI installer from PyPI.

You can also get the latest source code from our GitHub repository, but building from the repository will require that you install Cython version 0.16 or later.

For more detail on building pyzmq, see our Wiki.

We build eggs for OS X and Windows, so we generally recommend that those platforms use easy_install pyzmq, but pip install pyzmq should work on most platforms as well.

To build pyzmq from the git repo requires Cython.