As of Dec 2020, pip search will not work (more).

The current feasible solution is to search online, on: https://pypi.org/ (reference also provided by previous comments).

If anyone hitting the following error:

xmlrpc.client.Fault: <Fault -32500: "RuntimeError: PyPI's XMLRPC API has been temporarily disabled due to unmanageable load and will be deprecated in the near future. See https://status.python.org/ for more information."> 

as stated in #5216:

As an update: XMLRPC search does still remain disabled.

because:

As noted in #5216 (comment), a group of servers are hitting the pip search entry point, to an extent that PyPI cannot sustain that load with the current architecture of how pip search works.

Update: As a CLI alternative to pip, that uses PyPI registry, one can use poetry:

$ poetry search <package> 

Update [2023-05-01]: Altenative: [pip_search](https://github.com/victorgarric/pip_search) is an alternative to pip search and using shell aliases, one can overwrite the pip search with the actual execution of pip_search (complements to Johan)

As of December the 14th, 2020, the pip search functionality has been disabled :

$ pip search cast ERROR: XMLRPC request failed [code: -32500] RuntimeError: PyPI's XMLRPC API is currently disabled due to unmanageable load and will be deprecated in the near future. See https://status.python.org/ for more information. 

Alternatives

Here's a little tool called pip_search I've just found that does a simple search but it does the job.

This is pip_search v0.0.6 output:

$ pip_search pulsemixer ---------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Name Description pulsemixer pulsemixer - CLI and curses mixer for PulseAudio pulsectl-asyncio Asyncio frontend for the pulsectl Python bindings of libpulse pulsectl Python high-level interface and ctypes-based bindings for PulseAudio (libpulse) ---------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

UPDATE

pip_search has been updated, each folder is a clickable (CTRL+click) URL for each project, now it looks like this:

$ pip_search pulsemixer 🐍 https://pypi.org/search/?q=pulsemixer 🐍 ┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓ ┃ Package ┃ Version ┃ Released ┃ Description ┃ ┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩ │ 📂 pulsemixer │ 1.5.1 │ Apr 11, 2020 │ pulsemixer - CLI and curses mixer for PulseAudio │ │ 📂 pulsectl-asyncio │ 0.1.7 │ Jun 13, 2021 │ Asyncio frontend for the pulsectl Python bindings of libpulse │ │ 📂 pulsectl │ 21.5.18 │ May 22, 2021 │ Python high-level interface and ctypes-based bindings for PulseAudio (libpulse) │ └─────────────────────┴─────────┴──────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ 

To install it, just type:

pip install pip_search

There's also another tool that I've just tried called pypisearch.

To install it, just type: pip install pypisearch

And it works like this:

$ python -m pypisearch pulsemixer pulsemixer (1.5.1) [installed 1.5.0] pulsemixer - CLI and curses mixer for PulseAudio pulsectl-asyncio (0.1.5) Asyncio frontend for the pulsectl Python bindings of libpulse pulsectl (21.3.4) Python high-level interface and ctypes-based bindings for PulseAudio (libpulse) 

After Dec 2020, search doesn't work. But index does.

pip index versions <package_name>

EDIT: (You can also use pip index -vv versions <package> to get verbose output.)

1. To search use pip search QUERY

   Use pip help and pip help COMMAND to learn about all available commands and their options.

2. You can find a complete list of packages here:

   https://pypi.org/

   An index with simpler markup for easier automatic consumption can be found here:

   https://pypi.org/simple/

Pip search can solve your problem if you don't want to use it too often. But after regular use I found it hard to read, slow to use and it didn't show infos I sometimes needed (upload time, license, size, etc) so I ended up writing an alternative which I think turned out pretty nice.

It is called yip and it is like pip search on steroids. It supports regex search, colorized output and a menu system which makes installing from search result super easy. If you want to know more or see a screencap check it out on GitHub.

To see a list of all available packages try running

pip search * 

Just simply install a non-existing version of the package that you want to search. By this way, you can find not only the stable releases, but also the alpha, beta versions like 1.2.3a2.

pip install [package]==666.666.666 

As of today, none of the historical workarounds (poetry search, pip_search, yip, etc.) are reliable anymore:

• pip search was permanently disabled in Dec 2020 when PyPI shut down the XML‑RPC API.
• poetry search only works inside a Poetry project and no longer provides a global search.
• pip_search is abandoned and broken because PyPI changed its HTML structure.
• yip also fails because it still depends on the deprecated XML‑RPC API.

So if you try any of these, you’ll either get errors, crashes, or empty results.

A simple, working alternative

Instead of relying on broken wrappers, you can query PyPI’s official /simple/ index or JSON API directly. Here’s a minimal script (pipsearch.py) that mimics pip search by scanning the /simple/ index:

# pipsearch.py import requests, sys def search(term): r = requests.get("https://pypi.org/simple/") pkgs = [line.split(">")[-1].split("<")[0] for line in r.text.splitlines() if term.lower() in line.lower()] for name in pkgs[:20]: print(name) if __name__ == "__main__": if len(sys.argv) < 2: print("Usage: pipsearch <term>") else: search(sys.argv[1]) 

Usage:

python pipsearch.py vosk 

Example output:

ovos-stt-plugin-vosk ovos-ww-plugin-vosk pyvosklivesubtitle transkription-vosk vosk vosk-autosrt vosk-cli voskIntentVoiceConvertHanzi vosk-model-ko vosk-tts yairmoldovosk 

Notes

• This script is intentionally minimal: it just lists matching package names.
• You can extend it to fetch descriptions and versions via the JSON API (https://pypi.org/pypi/<package>/json).
• If you want muscle memory, alias pip search to call this script.

In short: all the old tools are dead because they relied on XML‑RPC. The only future‑proof way is to use PyPI’s JSON or Simple API directly.

Just use pip list | grep <package_name>