How to get the app a Django model is from?

The app_label is available as an attribute on the _meta attribute of any model.

from django.contrib.auth.models import User
print User._meta.app_label
# The object name is also available
print User._meta.object_name

You don't need to get the app or model just to get the contenttype - there's a handy method to do just that:

from django.contrib.contenttypes.models import ContentType

ContentType.objects.get_for_model(myobject)

Despite the name, it works for both model classes and instances.

You can get both app_label and model from your object using the built-in ContentType class:

from django.contrib.contenttypes.models import ContentType
from django.contrib.auth.models import User

user_obj = User.objects.create()
obj_content_type = ContentType.objects.get_for_model(user_obj)

print(obj_content_type.app_label)
# u'auth'
print(obj_content_type.model)
# u'user'

This is better approach respect of using the _meta properties that are defined for private purposes.