---
title: Install spaCy
next: /usage/models
menu:
  - ['Quickstart', 'quickstart']
  - ['Instructions', 'installation']
  - ['Troubleshooting', 'troubleshooting']
  - ['Changelog', 'changelog']
---

spaCy is compatible with **64-bit CPython 2.7 / 3.5+** and runs on
**Unix/Linux**, **macOS/OS X** and **Windows**. The latest spaCy releases are
available over [pip](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/spacy) and
[conda](https://anaconda.org/conda-forge/spacy).

> #### 📖 Looking for the old docs?
>
> To help you make the transition from v1.x to v2.0, we've uploaded the old
> website to [**legacy.spacy.io**](https://legacy.spacy.io/docs). Wherever
> possible, the new docs also include notes on features that have changed in
> v2.0, and features that were introduced in the new version.

## Quickstart {hidden="true"}

import QuickstartInstall from 'widgets/quickstart-install.js'

<QuickstartInstall title="Quickstart" id="quickstart" />

## Installation instructions {#installation}

### pip {#pip}

Using pip, spaCy releases are available as source packages and binary wheels (as
of v2.0.13).

```bash
$ pip install -U spacy
```

> #### Download models
>
> After installation you need to download a language model. For more info and
> available models, see the [docs on models](/models).
>
> ```bash
> $ python -m spacy download en_core_web_sm
>
> >>> import spacy
> >>> nlp = spacy.load("en_core_web_sm")
> ```

When using pip it is generally recommended to install packages in a virtual
environment to avoid modifying system state:

```bash
python -m venv .env
source .env/bin/activate
pip install spacy
```

### conda {#conda}

Thanks to our great community, we've been able to re-add conda support. You can
also install spaCy via `conda-forge`:

```bash
$ conda install -c conda-forge spacy
```

For the feedstock including the build recipe and configuration, check out
[this repository](https://github.com/conda-forge/spacy-feedstock). Improvements
and pull requests to the recipe and setup are always appreciated.

### Upgrading spaCy {#upgrading}

> #### Upgrading from v1 to v2
>
> Although we've tried to keep breaking changes to a minimum, upgrading from
> spaCy v1.x to v2.x may still require some changes to your code base. For
> details see the sections on [backwards incompatibilities](/usage/v2#incompat)
> and [migrating](/usage/v2#migrating). Also remember to download the new
> models, and retrain your own models.

When updating to a newer version of spaCy, it's generally recommended to start
with a clean virtual environment. If you're upgrading to a new major version,
make sure you have the latest **compatible models** installed, and that there
are no old shortcut links or incompatible model packages left over in your
environment, as this can often lead to unexpected results and errors. If you've
trained your own models, keep in mind that your train and runtime inputs must
match. This means you'll have to **retrain your models** with the new version.

As of v2.0, spaCy also provides a [`validate`](/api/cli#validate) command, which
lets you verify that all installed models are compatible with your spaCy
version. If incompatible models are found, tips and installation instructions
are printed. The command is also useful to detect out-of-sync model links
resulting from links created in different virtual environments. It's recommended
to run the command with `python -m` to make sure you're executing the correct
version of spaCy.

```bash
pip install -U spacy
python -m spacy validate
```

### Run spaCy with GPU {#gpu new="2.0.14"}

As of v2.0, spaCy comes with neural network models that are implemented in our
machine learning library, [Thinc](https://github.com/explosion/thinc). For GPU
support, we've been grateful to use the work of Chainer's
[CuPy](https://cupy.chainer.org) module, which provides a numpy-compatible
interface for GPU arrays.

spaCy can be installed on GPU by specifying `spacy[cuda]`, `spacy[cuda90]`,
`spacy[cuda91]`, `spacy[cuda92]` or `spacy[cuda100]`. If you know your cuda
version, using the more explicit specifier allows cupy to be installed via
wheel, saving some compilation time. The specifiers should install two
libraries: [`cupy`](https://cupy.chainer.org) and
[`thinc_gpu_ops`](https://github.com/explosion/thinc_gpu_ops).

```bash
$ pip install -U spacy[cuda92]
```

Once you have a GPU-enabled installation, the best way to activate it is to call
[`spacy.prefer_gpu`](/api/top-level#spacy.prefer_gpu) or
[`spacy.require_gpu()`](/api/top-level#spacy.require_gpu) somewhere in your
script before any models have been loaded. `require_gpu` will raise an error if
no GPU is available.

```python
import spacy

spacy.prefer_gpu()
nlp = spacy.load("en_core_web_sm")
```

### Compile from source {#source}

The other way to install spaCy is to clone its
[GitHub repository](https://github.com/explosion/spaCy) and build it from
source. That is the common way if you want to make changes to the code base.
You'll need to make sure that you have a development environment consisting of a
Python distribution including header files, a compiler,
[pip](https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/installing/),
[virtualenv](https://virtualenv.pypa.io/) and [git](https://git-scm.com)
installed. The compiler part is the trickiest. How to do that depends on your
system. See notes on [Ubuntu](#source-ubuntu), [macOS / OS X](#source-osx) and
[Windows](#source-windows) for details.

```bash
python -m pip install -U pip                   # update pip
git clone https://github.com/explosion/spaCy   # clone spaCy
cd spaCy                                       # navigate into directory

python -m venv .env                            # create environment in .env
source .env/bin/activate                       # activate virtual environment
\export PYTHONPATH=`pwd`                        # set Python path to spaCy directory
pip install -r requirements.txt                # install all requirements
python setup.py build_ext --inplace            # compile spaCy
```

Compared to regular install via pip, the
[`requirements.txt`](https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/tree/master/requirements.txt)
additionally installs developer dependencies such as Cython. See the the
[quickstart widget](#quickstart) to get the right commands for your platform and
Python version.

#### Ubuntu {#source-ubuntu}

Install system-level dependencies via `apt-get`:

```bash
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential python-dev git
```

#### macOS / OS X {#source-osx}

Install a recent version of [XCode](https://developer.apple.com/xcode/),
including the so-called "Command Line Tools". macOS and OS X ship with Python
and git preinstalled.

#### Windows {#source-windows}

Install a version of the
[Visual C++ Build Tools](https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/visual-cpp-build-tools/)
or
[Visual Studio Express](https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/visual-studio-express/)
that matches the version that was used to compile your Python interpreter. For
official distributions these are:

| Distribution | Version            |
| ------------ | ------------------ |
| Python 2.7   | Visual Studio 2008 |
| Python 3.4   | Visual Studio 2010 |
| Python 3.5+  | Visual Studio 2015 |

### Run tests {#run-tests}

spaCy comes with an
[extensive test suite](https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/tree/master/spacy/tests).
In order to run the tests, you'll usually want to clone the
[repository](https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/tree/master/) and
[build spaCy from source](#source). This will also install the required
development dependencies and test utilities defined in the `requirements.txt`.

Alternatively, you can find out where spaCy is installed and run `pytest` on
that directory. Don't forget to also install the test utilities via spaCy's
[`requirements.txt`](https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/tree/master/requirements.txt):

```bash
python -c "import os; import spacy; print(os.path.dirname(spacy.__file__))"
pip install -r path/to/requirements.txt
python -m pytest [spacy directory]
```

Calling `pytest` on the spaCy directory will run only the basic tests. The flag
`--slow` is optional and enables additional tests that take longer.

```bash
# make sure you are using recent pytest version
python -m pip install -U pytest

python -m pytest [spacy directory]                 # basic tests
python -m pytest [spacy directory] --slow          # basic and slow tests
```

## Troubleshooting guide {#troubleshooting}

This section collects some of the most common errors you may come across when
installing, loading and using spaCy, as well as their solutions.

> #### Help us improve this guide
>
> Did you come across a problem like the ones listed here and want to share the
> solution? You can find the "Suggest edits" button at the bottom of this page
> that points you to the source. We always appreciate
> [pull requests](https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/pulls)!

<Accordion title="No compatible model found" id="compatible-model">

```
No compatible model found for [lang] (spaCy vX.X.X).
```

This usually means that the model you're trying to download does not exist, or
isn't available for your version of spaCy. Check the
[compatibility table](https://github.com/explosion/spacy-models/tree/master/compatibility.json)
to see which models are available for your spaCy version. If you're using an old
version, consider upgrading to the latest release. Note that while spaCy
supports tokenization for [a variety of languages](/usage/models#languages), not
all of them come with statistical models. To only use the tokenizer, import the
language's `Language` class instead, for example
`from spacy.lang.fr import French`.

</Accordion>

<Accordion title="Symbolic link privilege not held" id="symlink-privilege">

```
OSError: symbolic link privilege not held
```

To create [shortcut links](/usage/models#usage) that let you load models by
name, spaCy creates a symbolic link in the `spacy/data` directory. This means
your user needs permission to do this. The above error mostly occurs when doing
a system-wide installation, which will create the symlinks in a system
directory. Run the `download` or `link` command as administrator (on Windows,
you can either right-click on your terminal or shell and select "Run as
Administrator"), set the `--user` flag when installing a model or use a virtual
environment to install spaCy in a user directory, instead of doing a system-wide
installation.

</Accordion>

<Accordion title="No such option: --no-cache-dir" id="no-cache-dir">

```
no such option: --no-cache-dir
```

The `download` command uses pip to install the models and sets the
`--no-cache-dir` flag to prevent it from requiring too much memory.
[This setting](https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/reference/pip_install/#caching)
requires pip v6.0 or newer. Run `pip install -U pip` to upgrade to the latest
version of pip. To see which version you have installed, run `pip --version`.

</Accordion>

<Accordion title="sre_constants.error: bad character range" id="narrow-unicode">

```
sre_constants.error: bad character range
```

In [v2.1](/usage/v2-1), spaCy changed its implementation of regular expressions
for tokenization to make it up to 2-3 times faster. But this also means that
it's very important now that you run spaCy with a wide unicode build of Python.
This means that the build has 1114111 unicode characters available, instead of
only 65535 in a narrow unicode build. You can check this by running the
following command:

```bash
python -c "import sys; print(sys.maxunicode)"
```

If you're running a narrow unicode build, reinstall Python and use a wide
unicode build instead. You can also rebuild Python and set the
`--enable-unicode=ucs4` flag.

</Accordion>

<Accordion title="Unknown locale: UTF-8" id="unknown-locale">

```
ValueError: unknown locale: UTF-8
```

This error can sometimes occur on OSX and is likely related to a still
unresolved [Python bug](https://bugs.python.org/issue18378). However, it's easy
to fix: just add the following to your `~/.bash_profile` or `~/.zshrc` and then
run `source ~/.bash_profile` or `source ~/.zshrc`. Make sure to add **both
lines** for `LC_ALL` and `LANG`.

```bash
\export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
\export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
```

</Accordion>

<Accordion title="Import error: No module named spacy" id="import-error">

```
Import Error: No module named spacy
```

This error means that the spaCy module can't be located on your system, or in
your environment. Make sure you have spaCy installed. If you're using a virtual
environment, make sure it's activated and check that spaCy is installed in that
environment – otherwise, you're trying to load a system installation. You can
also run `which python` to find out where your Python executable is located.

</Accordion>

<Accordion title="Import error: No module named [model]" id="import-error-models">

```
ImportError: No module named 'en_core_web_sm'
```

As of spaCy v1.7, all models can be installed as Python packages. This means
that they'll become importable modules of your application. When creating
[shortcut links](/usage/models#usage), spaCy will also try to import the model
to load its meta data. If this fails, it's usually a sign that the package is
not installed in the current environment. Run `pip list` or `pip freeze` to
check which model packages you have installed, and install the
[correct models](/models) if necessary. If you're importing a model manually at
the top of a file, make sure to use the name of the package, not the shortcut
link you've created.

</Accordion>

<Accordion title="Command not found: spacy" id="command-not-found">

```
command not found: spacy
```

This error may occur when running the `spacy` command from the command line.
spaCy does not currently add an entry to your `PATH` environment variable, as
this can lead to unexpected results, especially when using a virtual
environment. Instead, spaCy adds an auto-alias that maps `spacy` to
`python -m spacy]`. If this is not working as expected, run the command with
`python -m`, yourself – for example `python -m spacy download en_core_web_sm`.
For more info on this, see the [`download`](/api/cli#download) command.

</Accordion>

<Accordion title="'module' object has no attribute 'load'" id="module-load">

```
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'load'
```

While this could technically have many causes, including spaCy being broken, the
most likely one is that your script's file or directory name is "shadowing" the
module – e.g. your file is called `spacy.py`, or a directory you're importing
from is called `spacy`. So, when using spaCy, never call anything else `spacy`.

</Accordion>

<Accordion title="Pronoun lemma is returned as -PRON-" id="pron-lemma">

```python
doc = nlp("They are")
print(doc[0].lemma_)
# -PRON-
```

This is in fact expected behavior and not a bug. Unlike verbs and common nouns,
there's no clear base form of a personal pronoun. Should the lemma of "me" be
"I", or should we normalize person as well, giving "it" — or maybe "he"? spaCy's
solution is to introduce a novel symbol, `-PRON-`, which is used as the lemma
for all personal pronouns. For more info on this, see the
[lemmatization specs](/api/annotation#lemmatization).

</Accordion>

<Accordion title="NER model doesn't recognise other entities anymore after training" id="catastrophic-forgetting">

If your training data only contained new entities and you didn't mix in any
examples the model previously recognized, it can cause the model to "forget"
what it had previously learned. This is also referred to as the "catastrophic
forgetting problem". A solution is to pre-label some text, and mix it with the
new text in your updates. You can also do this by running spaCy over some text,
extracting a bunch of entities the model previously recognized correctly, and
adding them to your training examples.

</Accordion>

<Accordion title="Unhashable type: 'list'" id="unhashable-list">

```
TypeError: unhashable type: 'list'
```

If you're training models, writing them to disk, and versioning them with git,
you might encounter this error when trying to load them in a Windows
environment. This happens because a default install of Git for Windows is
configured to automatically convert Unix-style end-of-line characters (LF) to
Windows-style ones (CRLF) during file checkout (and the reverse when
committing). While that's mostly fine for text files, a trained model written to
disk has some binary files that should not go through this conversion. When they
do, you get the error above. You can fix it by either changing your
[`core.autocrlf`](https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Customizing-Git-Git-Configuration)
setting to `"false"`, or by committing a
[`.gitattributes`](https://git-scm.com/docs/gitattributes) file] to your
repository to tell git on which files or folders it shouldn't do LF-to-CRLF
conversion, with an entry like `path/to/spacy/model/** -text`. After you've done
either of these, clone your repository again.

</Accordion>

## Changelog {#changelog}

import Changelog from 'widgets/changelog.js'

<Changelog />