What are the best Python GUI frameworks/toolkits?

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Feb 1, 2024

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Kivy vs PyQt vs Tkinter

vs PySimpleGUI vs Dear PyGui vs BeeWare/Toga vs PySide vs Pyjs vs Wax vs pyglet vs Abstra vs PyGObject / Python3 vs Flexx vs guietta vs MD Python Designer vs Eel

Specs

License

MIT

Platforms

Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, Android, Pi

Python 2.7 & 3 Support

Supports GUI Frameworks

PRICE

Price

License

Platforms

Python 2.7 & 3 Support

Supports GUI Frameworks

PRICE

Price

License

Platforms

Python 2.7 & 3 Support

Supports GUI Frameworks

PRICE

Price

License

Platforms

Python 2.7 & 3 Support

2.7 & 3.x

Supports GUI Frameworks

tkinter, Qt, WxPython, Remi (GUI in Browser)

PRICE

Price

License

MIT

Platforms

Windows, Linux, Mac

Python 2.7 & 3 Support

Supports GUI Frameworks

PRICE

FREE

Price

License

Platforms

Python 2.7 & 3 Support

Supports GUI Frameworks

PRICE

Price

License

Platforms

Python 2.7 & 3 Support

Supports GUI Frameworks

PRICE

Price

License

Platforms

Python 2.7 & 3 Support

Supports GUI Frameworks

PRICE

Price

License

Platforms

Python 2.7 & 3 Support

Supports GUI Frameworks

PRICE

Price

License

BSD

Platforms

Python 2.7 & 3 Support

Supports GUI Frameworks

PRICE

Price

License

Platforms

Python 2.7 & 3 Support

Supports GUI Frameworks

PRICE

Price

License

LGPLv2.1+

Platforms

Python 2.7 & 3 Support

Supports GUI Frameworks

PRICE

Price

License

Platforms

Python 2.7 & 3 Support

Supports GUI Frameworks

PRICE

Price

License

LGPL

Platforms

Windows, Linux, MacOS

Python 2.7 & 3 Support

Python 3

Supports GUI Frameworks

PRICE

Price

FREE

License

Platforms

Python 2.7 & 3 Support

Supports GUI Frameworks

PRICE

Price

License

Platforms

Python 2.7 & 3 Support

Supports GUI Frameworks

PRICE

Price

Pros + Cons

Pro
Can be used to develop mobile applications

Kivy can be used to develop multi-touch applications and games on iOS and Android. One popular example showcasing the capabilities of Kivy, with source code provided for reference, is “2048 with Kivy” on the iOS App Store and Google Play Store.

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Pro
High performance

Cross-platform frameworks implementing native APIs usually have one issue in common: performance across platforms. Kivy solves this by implementing performance-critical features in C / Cython, and it’s graphics engine is built on OpenGL ES — hardware-acceleration out of the box with many smart under-the-hood optimizations to ensure high performance.

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Con
Documentation & examples are terrible

Terrible documentation & not too many resources can be found.

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Pro
Modern looking UIs

Kivy's widgets are entirely custom and look the same across all platforms out of the box. It has theming support — the default theme has a flat modern look to it, and there are third-party themes available: FlatKivy, KivyMD (Material Design), etc.

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Con
No full support for accessing certain system-level APIs

It can be hard to accomplish things that requires APIs not supported by Kivy — while it is possible to interface with the platform's system libraries with third-party Python libraries (pyobjc for macOS, pyjnius for Android, etc.), it provides a level of indirection and can be hard to work with if you are not familiar with the platform's native API.

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Con
Very difficult to deploy to various platforms, like Android

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Pro
MIT Licensed

Kivy is released under the MIT License. It is completely free to use, even for commercial applications.

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Pro
Great for interactive applications

Kivy shines when you need more than traditional UI controls or inputs. It has native support for many kinds of input devices and gestures (such as the Apple Trackpad / Magic Mouse, joysticks, game controllers).

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Pro
Ability to compose UI outside of application logic

Kivy has a domain-specific language called KV for composing UIs. Instead of writing Python code for your UI, you can write it in KV and separate your application logic from its presentational code.

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Pro
Kv design language

Kv design language is designed to work well with scalable graphical user interfaces (GUIs) as one of its primary focuses. It also segregates the logic from the design elements, making them easier to visually distinguish from each other.

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Pro
Multitouch gestures

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Pro
Versatile

Compared to other GUI frameworks, Kivy is a lot more dynamic and versatile - it is essentially an OpenGL canvas; the graphics API is an abstraction of low-level OpenGL commands. This means you can use it to draw any kind of graphics, and makes Kivy suitable for game development.

Comment

Pro
API is easy to grasp for someone with a Qt/C++ background

PyQt has a straightforward API with its classes corresponding to Qt C++’s, and as such, the API documentation for C++ works for Python — the namespaces, properties, methods are all the same. If you have experience working with Qt and/or C++, you will find PyQt easy to work with.

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Pro
Stability

PyQt is used in many large-scale applications and has stood the test of time.

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Pro
Many native widgets (UI components) available

Qt provides many widgets (buttons, textboxes, menus, et al.) out of the box, and they have a native look to them across all supported platforms: the same widget looks similar to the platform's native widget (e.g. a button in a PyQt application looks the same as a button on macOS, or Windows). On Linux systems, it changes according to the desktop environment.

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Pro
Signal/slot mechanism allows for code flexibility

GUI programming with Qt is built around the concept of signals and slots for communication between objects. A signal is emitted when an event occurs (e.g. a button is clicked), and slots are callable functions that handle the event (e.g. show a pop-up, when a button is clicked). This allows for flexibility when handling GUI events and results in a cleaner codebase.

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Pro
WYSIWYG interface builder available

PyQt has support for loading UIs built with Qt Designer, a drag-and-drop WYSIWYG interface builder, which allows you to design and build interfaces without writing any code.

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Pro
Many learning resources available

PyQt is one of the most popular UI frameworks for Python. It has an active community with many third-party code examples and tutorials available.

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Con
Steep learning curve

It can take a while to get productive with PyQt. It is a huge framework and there are many ways to implement different things, some of them are conflicting and might be confusing to the unfamiliar.

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Con
Paid license required if your application is not "free as in speech"

PyQt is dual-licensed with GPL v3 and the Riverbank Commercial License. If you do not intend on releasing your application under a GPL-compatible license (i.e. make your application open-source), you must pay for a commercial license.

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Pro
More than just a GUI framework

Qt wraps several native platform APIs for networking, databases, etc. and provides standardized access to them through a single API — one codebase can cater to many platforms and perform the same across them.

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Con
No Python-specific documentation on classes in PyQt5

PyQt5's documentation links to its Qt counterpart, which is in C++. This can be confusing for someone without a background in C++ or experience with Qt.

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Pro
Free for commercial use

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Pro
Included in the standard Python library

You probably already have it, since it's included in the standard Python distributions.

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Pro
Easy to learn and get productive with

TkInter is a small library with a gentle learning curve compared to what’s out there. It has a straightforward API and is often the go-to choice for building quick GUIs for Python scripts.

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Con
No advanced widgets

TkInter does not come with advanced widgets out of the box (e.g. date picker).

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Con
Not good looking

You need a lot of code to make it look good.

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Pro
Building executables is less complicated

Compared to other GUI libraries, building executables for TkInter applications are simpler because TkInter is included in Python and has no other dependencies. This results in less complicated packaging requirements and smaller binary size.

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Pro
Fast

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Con
No reliable UI builder available

There is no tool in the same league as Qt Designer (PyQt) for TkInter.

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Pro
Extremely easy to learn, compared to other GUI

Python GUI For Humans - Transforms tkinter, Qt, Remi, WxPython into portable people-friendly Pythonic interfaces. Requires 1/2 to 1/10th the amount of code as underlying frameworks. One afternoon is all that is required to learn the PySimpleGUI package and write your first custom GUI. Students can begin using within their first week of Python education. No callback functions. You do not need to write the word "class" anywhere in your code. "I've been working to learn PyQT for the past week in my off time as an intro to GUI design and how to apply it to my existing scripts... Took me ~30 minutes to figure out PySimpleGUI and get my scripts working with a GUI." "Python GUI has been an absolute nightmare for me and I've avoided it like the plague. Until I saw PysimpleGUI." "I've been pretty amazed at how much more intuitive it is than raw tk/qt. The dude developing it is super active on the project too so if you come across situations that you just can't get the code to do what you want you can make bug/enhancement issues that are almost assured to get a meaningful response." "This library is the easiest way of GUI programming in Python! I'm totally in love with it" "Wow that readme is extensive and great." (hear the love for docs often) "Coming from R, Python is absolutely slick for GUIs. PySimpleGUI is a dream." "I have been writing Python programs for about 4 or 5 months now. Up until this week I never had luck with any UI libraries like Tkinter, Qt, Kivy. I went from not even being able to load a window in Tkinter reliably to making a loading screen, and full program in one night with PySimpleGUI." "I love PySimpleGUI! I've been teaching it in my Python classes instead of Tkinter."

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Pro
Single file

Either pip install or copy single source file to your project.

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Con
Bad dev attitude

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Pro
Run PySimpleGUI code on multiple GUI Frameworks by changing 1 line of code

The same PySimpleGUI code written by the user can be executed on multiple GUI platforms without changing the source code. Only the import statement needs to be changed. Write the GUI once, run on multiple platforms including a web browser Create windows that look and operate identically to those created directly with tkinter, Qt, WxPython, and Remi.

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Pro
No package dependencies other than tkinter

Wraps tkinter and does not require any other packages be installed.

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Pro
Easy and comprehensive documentation, tutorials, example code and videos

300+ Demo Programs teach you how to integrate with many popular packages like OpenCV, Matplotlib, PyGame, etc. Tons of documentation, a Cookbook, built-in help using docstrings - in short, it's heavily documented.

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Pro
Open source

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Pro
Highly customizable

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Pro
Multi-platform support

Python code with GUI will run on Windows, Linux, Raspberry Pi and Android (PyDroid3) with very minor changes. one to 4 lines of boilerplate type code.

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Pro
Supports both Python 2.7 and Python 3

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Con
Non pythonic

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Con
Bad documentation

The documentation has no structure, is very messy and is based on a case-by-case usage instead of explaining how the lib works.

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Pro
Uses Python language constructs cleverly

PySimpleGUI leverages the Python language constructs in clever ways that shorten the amount of code and return the GUI data in a straightforward manner. When a widget is created in a form layout, it is configured in place, not several lines of code away. With most GUIs, arranging GUI widgets often requires several lines of code… at least one or two lines per widget. PySimpleGUI uses an "auto-packer" that automatically creates the layout. No pack or grid system is needed to lay out a GUI window. What makes PySimpleGUI superior for newcomers is that the package contains the majority of the code that the user is normally expected to write. Button callbacks are handled by PySimpleGUI, not the user's code. Beginners struggle to grasp the concept of a function, and expecting them to understand a call-back function in the first few weeks is a stretch.

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Pro
Updated frequently

New releases, new Demo Programs, documentation, online resources as constantly being added.

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Con
No forms designer

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Pro
Udemy Course

Has a 61 lecture course on Udemy now that's got more than the free older courses on YouTube.

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Pro
Multi-purpose

Even while it's in beta, there's a ton of stuff that can be done with this framework.

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Pro
Helpful and responsive community

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Pro
Great performance

It's fast and responsive due to being written in C++, using the GPU and it is asynchronous by default.

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Pro
Smooth and easy to scale with a project

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Pro
Permissive MIT license

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Pro
Pythonic API

Despite originating from C/C++, DPG is the most Pythonic framework out there.

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Con
Community is still very small

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Pro
Open source

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Pro
No GUI lag

GUI and Python API run at separate thread automatically!

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Pro
Cross-platform with real native widgets

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Con
Not everything works on Windows

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Con
Still in alpha

Some features are missing and the API isn't that stable yet.

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Pro
Supported by the Qt Company

Qt for Python aka PySide2 is the official set of Python bindings supported by the Qt Company.

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Pro
Qt widgets

Possibility to use a traditional widget-based user interface.

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Pro
QtQuick/QML

Possibility to use a declarative approach to define the user interface.

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Con
Similar to PyQt, you need a C++ background. at least you can read C++ code

Qt's document is poor, and Qt for Python(PySdie) is even worse. this document assumes that you are already familiar with Qt. if you want to customize a Widget, you need to look at the Qt C++ source code to know what to do.

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Pro
Weak copyleft

PySide is licensed under the LGPL, which makes it easier to incorporate into commercial projects than PyQt.

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Pro
Written in pure Python

A small advantage, but being a core Python developer, it may be the best to stick to the roots and develop with pyglet as it is able to compile using other Python interpreters.

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Pro
Cross-platform

Works with Windows, Linux, and OS X.

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Pro
Modern looking UIs

Widgets have a sleek and modern design.

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Pro
Drag-and-drop UI editor

Makes it very easy and fast to create the app's look, then just plug it into the script using variables and functions.

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Pro
Simple XML format for UIs

PyGObject provides tools to load UIs from XML files or strings, reducing the Python code needed to construct GUIs.

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Pro
Works particularly well on Linux, as many desktops use Python and GObject

GObject is a 'C' library with bindings to many other languages, so can be widely used. Nice GTK.UIManager function to produce a menu system from a string.

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Pro
Layout GUI with code

Super fast GUI layout using Python lists and strings

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Pro
Automatic GUI updates

Gueitta uses a property-like mechanism to read/write widgets and actions

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Pro
Amazing array of uses

The GUI Designer is compatible with all the features of the software. It is compatible with all major databases. They have an interesting GUI database form on their webpage. The GUI can also include graphs and you can create applications like desmos. You can also use ICP DAS, LabJack and Advantech devices.

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Pro
No adjustment required

The GUI designer has more than one coding language that it's compatible with, however it works well with Python. The transition from Kivy is easy.The GUI Designer is super easy to use and saves lots of time.

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Con
Visual appearance compared to other GUI frameworks/Designers

The end product did not look as appealing as it would have done with a different GUI Designer. However, it still looked professional and got the job done perfectly.

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