The official Python package index is PyPI, short for the Python Package Index. It is the central online repository for third-party software distributed for Python.
PyPI began in 2003 and is operated by the Python Software Foundation. Developers publish packages there as source distributions, called sdists, or as wheels, which can include precompiled components. Each project page can contain release files, metadata, documentation links, and version history.
A common mix-up is confusing PyPI with pip. pip is a package installer and command-line tool; it commonly downloads packages from PyPI but is not the index itself. conda is another package-management ecosystem, while Anaconda is a Python distribution that includes tools and packages. PyPI is analogous to repositories such as CPAN for Perl and CRAN for R.
In 2018, PyPI’s public service moved to Warehouse, the modern software platform that powers the pypi.org website. Package names, releases, dependencies, and compatibility information are all organized through this index.