How to Install `pytesseract` in Python

v0.3.13 General Purpose Python >=3.8 Apache License 2.0

Python-tesseract is a python wrapper for Google's Tesseract-OCR

Install pip install pytesseract

What is pytesseract?

Python-tesseract is a python wrapper for Google's Tesseract-OCR

Python-tesseract is an optical character recognition (OCR) tool for python. That is, it will recognize and "read" the text embedded in images.

Python-tesseract is a wrapper for . It is also useful as a stand-alone invocation script to tesseract, as it can read all image types supported by the Pillow and Leptonica imaging libraries, including jpeg, png, gif, bmp, tiff, and others. Additionally, if used as a script, Python-tesseract will print the recognized text instead of writing it to a file.

Note: Test images are located in the `` folder of the Git repo.

Documentation → PyPI page → Author: Samuel Hoffstaetter

Quick Start

Minimal example to get started with pytesseract:

import pytesseract

print(pytesseract.__version__)

Installation

pip (standard)

pip install pytesseract

Virtual environment (recommended)

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

pip3

pip3 install pytesseract

conda

conda install -c conda-forge pytesseract

Poetry

poetry add pytesseract

Dependencies

Installing pytesseract will also install these packages:

packaging Pillow

Verify the Installation

After installing, confirm the package is available:

python -c "import pytesseract; print(pytesseract.__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 pytesseract with pip.

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pytesseract'

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

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

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pytesseract' (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 pytesseract to install into the interpreter you are running.

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

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

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

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 pytesseract. 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 pytesseract

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 pytesseract

Recent Releases

Version	Released
`0.3.13` latest	2024-08-16
`0.3.10`	2022-08-16
`0.3.9`	2022-02-19
`0.3.8`	2021-06-28
`0.3.7`	2020-12-15

Full release history on PyPI →

Manage pytesseract

Upgrade to latest version

pip install --upgrade pytesseract

Install a specific version

pip install pytesseract==0.3.13

Uninstall

pip uninstall pytesseract

Check what is installed

pip show pytesseract

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

How to Install pytesseract in Python