Python memory leaks

I tried out most options mentioned previously but found this small and intuitive package to be the best: pympler

It's quite straight forward to trace objects that were not garbage-collected, check this small example:

install package via pip install pympler

from pympler.tracker import SummaryTracker
tracker = SummaryTracker()

# ... some code you want to investigate ...

tracker.print_diff()

The output shows you all the objects that have been added, plus the memory they consumed.

Sample output:

                                 types |   # objects |   total size
====================================== | =========== | ============
                                  list |        1095 |    160.78 KB
                                   str |        1093 |     66.33 KB
                                   int |         120 |      2.81 KB
                                  dict |           3 |       840 B
      frame (codename: create_summary) |           1 |       560 B
          frame (codename: print_diff) |           1 |       480 B

This package provides a number of more features. Check pympler's documentation, in particular the section Identifying memory leaks.

Have a look at this article: Tracing python memory leaks

Also, note that the garbage collection module actually can have debug flags set. Look at the set_debug function. Additionally, look at this code by Gnibbler for determining the types of objects that have been created after a call.