Quickly determine if a number is prime in Python for numbers < 1 billion

For solving Project Euler problems I did what you suggest in your question: Implement the Miller Rabin test (in C# but I suspect it will be fast in Python too). The algorithm is not that difficult. For numbers below 4,759,123,141 it is enough to check that a number is a strong pseudo prime to the bases 2, 7, 61. Combine that with trial division by small primes.

I do not know how many of the problems you have solved so far, but having a fast primality test at your disposal will be of great value for a lot of the problems.

For numbers as large as 10^9, one approach can be to generate all primes up to sqrt(10^9) and then simply check the divisibility of the input number against the numbers in that list. If a number isn't divisible by any other prime less than or equal to its square root, it must itself be a prime (it must have at least one factor <=sqrt and another >= sqrt to not be prime). Notice how you do not need to test divisibility for all numbers, just up to the square root (which is around 32,000 - quite manageable I think). You can generate the list of primes using a sieve.

You could also go for a probabilistic prime test. But they can be harder to understand, and for this problem simply using a generated list of primes should suffice.