How to Install `catboost` in Python

v1.2.10 Data & Science Apache License, Version 2.0

CatBoost Python Package

Install pip install catboost

What is catboost?

CatBoost Python Package

CatBoost is a fast, scalable, high performance gradient boosting on decision trees library. Used for ranking, classification, regression and other ML tasks.

Documentation → PyPI page → Author: CatBoost Developers

Quick Start

Minimal example to get started with catboost:

import catboost

print(catboost.__version__)

Installation

pip (standard)

pip install catboost

Virtual environment (recommended)

python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate   # Windows: venv\Scripts\activate
pip install catboost

pip3

pip3 install catboost

conda

conda install -c conda-forge catboost

Poetry

poetry add catboost

Dependencies

Installing catboost will also install these packages:

graphviz matplotlib numpy pandas scipy plotly six

Verify the Installation

After installing, confirm the package is available:

python -c "import catboost; print(catboost.__version__)"

If this prints a version number, installation succeeded. If you see a ModuleNotFoundError, see the errors section below.

Installation Errors

Common errors when installing catboost with pip.

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'catboost'

Cause: The package is not installed in the current Python environment.

Fix: Run pip install catboost. If using a virtual environment, ensure it is activated first.

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'catboost' (installed but still failing)

Cause: pip installed the package into a different Python than the one running your script.

Fix: Use python -m pip install catboost to install into the interpreter you are running.

ImportError: cannot import name 'X' from 'catboost'

Cause: The function or class does not exist in the installed version.

Fix: Check the version with pip show catboost and upgrade with pip install --upgrade catboost.

pip: command not found

Cause: pip is not in PATH or Python was not added to PATH during installation.

Fix: Try python -m pip install catboost. On macOS/Linux try pip3.

PermissionError: [Errno 13] Permission denied

Cause: No write access to the system Python package directory.

Fix: Use a virtual environment, or add --user: pip install --user catboost

SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED

Cause: pip cannot verify PyPI's SSL certificate — common behind corporate proxies.

Fix: Try: pip install --trusted-host pypi.org --trusted-host files.pythonhosted.org catboost

MemoryError when loading data

Cause: Dataset is too large to fit in RAM.

Fix: Read in chunks, filter columns on load, or consider Polars/Dask for out-of-core processing.

Recent Releases

Version	Released
`1.2.10` latest	2026-02-18
`1.2.9`	2026-02-17
`1.2.8`	2025-04-13
`1.2.7`	2024-09-07
`1.2.6`	2024-09-05

Full release history on PyPI →

Manage catboost

Upgrade to latest version

pip install --upgrade catboost

Install a specific version

pip install catboost==1.2.10

Uninstall

pip uninstall catboost

Check what is installed

pip show catboost

Last updated: 2026-04-11 • Data from PyPI

How to Install catboost in Python