How do I search for an available Python package using pip?

To search for a package, issue the command

pip search [package-name]

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>

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/

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)