https://github.com/ibis-project/ibis
the portable Python dataframe library
https://github.com/ibis-project/ibis
bigquery clickhouse database datafusion duckdb impala mssql mysql pandas polars postgresql pyarrow pyspark python snowflake sql sqlite trino
Last synced: 6 months ago
JSON representation
the portable Python dataframe library
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/ibis-project/ibis
- Owner: ibis-project
- License: apache-2.0
- Created: 2015-04-17T20:43:46.000Z (over 10 years ago)
- Default Branch: main
- Last Pushed: 2025-05-05T03:24:05.000Z (6 months ago)
- Last Synced: 2025-05-05T22:41:32.338Z (6 months ago)
- Topics: bigquery, clickhouse, database, datafusion, duckdb, impala, mssql, mysql, pandas, polars, postgresql, pyarrow, pyspark, python, snowflake, sql, sqlite, trino
- Language: Python
- Homepage: https://ibis-project.org
- Size: 173 MB
- Stars: 5,725
- Watchers: 81
- Forks: 633
- Open Issues: 303
-
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
- Contributing: docs/CONTRIBUTING.md
- License: LICENSE.txt
- Code of conduct: CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
- Security: SECURITY.md
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- pytrade.org - ibis
- best-of-python - GitHub - 11% open · ⏱️ 17.10.2025): (Database Clients)
README
# Ibis
[](http://ibis-project.org)
[](https://ibis-project.zulipchat.com)
[](https://anaconda.org/conda-forge/ibis-framework)
[](https://pypi.org/project/ibis-framework)
[](https://github.com/ibis-project/ibis/actions/workflows/ibis-main.yml?query=branch%3Amain)
[](https://github.com/ibis-project/ibis/actions/workflows/ibis-backends.yml?query=branch%3Amain)
[](https://codecov.io/gh/ibis-project/ibis)
## What is Ibis?
Ibis is the portable Python dataframe library:
- Fast local dataframes (via DuckDB by default)
- Lazy dataframe expressions
- Interactive mode for iterative data exploration
- [Compose Python dataframe and SQL code](#python--sql-better-together)
- Use the same dataframe API for [nearly 20 backends](#backends)
- Iterate locally and deploy remotely by [changing a single line of code](#portability)
See the documentation on ["Why Ibis?"](https://ibis-project.org/why) to learn more.
## Getting started
You can `pip install` Ibis with a backend and example data:
```bash
pip install 'ibis-framework[duckdb,examples]'
```
> 💡 **Tip**
>
> See the [installation guide](https://ibis-project.org/install) for more installation options.
Then use Ibis:
```python
>>> import ibis
>>> ibis.options.interactive = True
>>> t = ibis.examples.penguins.fetch()
>>> t
┏━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
┃ species ┃ island ┃ bill_length_mm ┃ bill_depth_mm ┃ flipper_length_mm ┃ body_mass_g ┃ sex ┃ year ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
│ string │ string │ float64 │ float64 │ int64 │ int64 │ string │ int64 │
├─────────┼───────────┼────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────────┼─────────────┼────────┼───────┤
│ Adelie │ Torgersen │ 39.1 │ 18.7 │ 181 │ 3750 │ male │ 2007 │
│ Adelie │ Torgersen │ 39.5 │ 17.4 │ 186 │ 3800 │ female │ 2007 │
│ Adelie │ Torgersen │ 40.3 │ 18.0 │ 195 │ 3250 │ female │ 2007 │
│ Adelie │ Torgersen │ NULL │ NULL │ NULL │ NULL │ NULL │ 2007 │
│ Adelie │ Torgersen │ 36.7 │ 19.3 │ 193 │ 3450 │ female │ 2007 │
│ Adelie │ Torgersen │ 39.3 │ 20.6 │ 190 │ 3650 │ male │ 2007 │
│ Adelie │ Torgersen │ 38.9 │ 17.8 │ 181 │ 3625 │ female │ 2007 │
│ Adelie │ Torgersen │ 39.2 │ 19.6 │ 195 │ 4675 │ male │ 2007 │
│ Adelie │ Torgersen │ 34.1 │ 18.1 │ 193 │ 3475 │ NULL │ 2007 │
│ Adelie │ Torgersen │ 42.0 │ 20.2 │ 190 │ 4250 │ NULL │ 2007 │
│ … │ … │ … │ … │ … │ … │ … │ … │
└─────────┴───────────┴────────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────────┴─────────────┴────────┴───────┘
>>> g = t.group_by("species", "island").agg(count=t.count()).order_by("count")
>>> g
┏━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
┃ species ┃ island ┃ count ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
│ string │ string │ int64 │
├───────────┼───────────┼───────┤
│ Adelie │ Biscoe │ 44 │
│ Adelie │ Torgersen │ 52 │
│ Adelie │ Dream │ 56 │
│ Chinstrap │ Dream │ 68 │
│ Gentoo │ Biscoe │ 124 │
└───────────┴───────────┴───────┘
```
> 💡 **Tip**
>
> See the [getting started tutorial](https://ibis-project.org/tutorials/basics) for a full introduction to Ibis.
## Python + SQL: better together
For most backends, Ibis works by compiling its dataframe expressions into SQL:
```python
>>> ibis.to_sql(g)
SELECT
"t1"."species",
"t1"."island",
"t1"."count"
FROM (
SELECT
"t0"."species",
"t0"."island",
COUNT(*) AS "count"
FROM "penguins" AS "t0"
GROUP BY
1,
2
) AS "t1"
ORDER BY
"t1"."count" ASC
```
You can mix SQL and Python code:
```python
>>> a = t.sql("SELECT species, island, count(*) AS count FROM penguins GROUP BY 1, 2")
>>> a
┏━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
┃ species ┃ island ┃ count ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
│ string │ string │ int64 │
├───────────┼───────────┼───────┤
│ Adelie │ Torgersen │ 52 │
│ Adelie │ Biscoe │ 44 │
│ Adelie │ Dream │ 56 │
│ Gentoo │ Biscoe │ 124 │
│ Chinstrap │ Dream │ 68 │
└───────────┴───────────┴───────┘
>>> b = a.order_by("count")
>>> b
┏━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┓
┃ species ┃ island ┃ count ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━┩
│ string │ string │ int64 │
├───────────┼───────────┼───────┤
│ Adelie │ Biscoe │ 44 │
│ Adelie │ Torgersen │ 52 │
│ Adelie │ Dream │ 56 │
│ Chinstrap │ Dream │ 68 │
│ Gentoo │ Biscoe │ 124 │
└───────────┴───────────┴───────┘
```
This allows you to combine the flexibility of Python with the scale and performance of modern SQL.
## Backends
Ibis supports nearly 20 backends:
- [Apache DataFusion](https://ibis-project.org/backends/datafusion/)
- [Apache Druid](https://ibis-project.org/backends/druid/)
- [Apache Flink](https://ibis-project.org/backends/flink)
- [Apache Impala](https://ibis-project.org/backends/impala/)
- [Apache PySpark](https://ibis-project.org/backends/pyspark/)
- [BigQuery](https://ibis-project.org/backends/bigquery/)
- [ClickHouse](https://ibis-project.org/backends/clickhouse/)
- [DuckDB](https://ibis-project.org/backends/duckdb/)
- [Exasol](https://ibis-project.org/backends/exasol)
- [MySQL](https://ibis-project.org/backends/mysql/)
- [Oracle](https://ibis-project.org/backends/oracle/)
- [Polars](https://ibis-project.org/backends/polars/)
- [PostgreSQL](https://ibis-project.org/backends/postgresql/)
- [RisingWave](https://ibis-project.org/backends/risingwave/)
- [SQL Server](https://ibis-project.org/backends/mssql/)
- [SQLite](https://ibis-project.org/backends/sqlite/)
- [Snowflake](https://ibis-project.org/backends/snowflake)
- [Theseus](https://voltrondata.com/start)
- [Trino](https://ibis-project.org/backends/trino/)
## How it works
Most Python dataframes are tightly coupled to their execution engine. And many databases only support SQL, with no Python API. Ibis solves this problem by providing a common API for data manipulation in Python, and compiling that API into the backend’s native language. This means you can learn a single API and use it across any supported backend (execution engine).
Ibis broadly supports two types of backend:
1. SQL-generating backends
2. DataFrame-generating backends
## Portability
To use different backends, you can set the backend Ibis uses:
```python
>>> ibis.set_backend("duckdb")
>>> ibis.set_backend("polars")
>>> ibis.set_backend("datafusion")
```
Typically, you'll create a connection object:
```python
>>> con = ibis.duckdb.connect()
>>> con = ibis.polars.connect()
>>> con = ibis.datafusion.connect()
```
And work with tables in that backend:
```python
>>> con.list_tables()
['penguins']
>>> t = con.table("penguins")
```
You can also read from common file formats like CSV or Apache Parquet:
```python
>>> t = con.read_csv("penguins.csv")
>>> t = con.read_parquet("penguins.parquet")
```
This allows you to iterate locally and deploy remotely by changing a single line of code.
> 💡 **Tip**
>
> Check out [the blog on backend agnostic arrays](https://ibis-project.org/posts/backend-agnostic-arrays/) for one example using the same code across DuckDB and BigQuery.
## Community and contributing
Ibis is an open source project and welcomes contributions from anyone in the community.
- Read [the contributing guide](https://github.com/ibis-project/ibis/blob/main/docs/CONTRIBUTING.md).
- We care about keeping the community welcoming for all. Check out [the code of conduct](https://github.com/ibis-project/ibis/blob/main/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md).
- The Ibis project is open sourced under the [Apache License](https://github.com/ibis-project/ibis/blob/main/LICENSE.txt).
Join our community by interacting on GitHub or chatting with us on [Zulip](https://ibis-project.zulipchat.com/).
For more information visit https://ibis-project.org/.
## Governance
The Ibis project is an [independently governed](https://github.com/ibis-project/governance/blob/main/governance.md) open source community project to build and maintain the portable Python dataframe library. Ibis has contributors across a range of data companies and institutions.