Installation guide

The 25.10.0 version of akismet is officially tested and supported on the following versions of Python:

• Python 3.10

• Python 3.11

• Python 3.12

• Python 3.13

• Python 3.14

Installing akismet

To install the latest stable released version of akismet, run the following command from a command prompt/terminal:

macOS/Linux/other Unix

python -m pip install --upgrade akismet

Windows

py -m pip install --upgrade akismet

This will use pip, the standard Python package-installation tool. If you are using a supported version of Python, your installation of Python should have come with pip bundled. If pip does not appear to be present, you can try running the following from a command prompt/terminal:

macOS/Linux/other Unix

python -m ensurepip --upgrade

Windows

py -m ensurepip --upgrade

Instructions are also available for how to obtain and manually install or upgrade pip.

Configuration

To use this library, you will need to obtain an Akismet API key and register a site for use with the Akismet web service; you can do this at <https://akismet.com>. Once you have a key and corresponding registered site URL to use with it, place them in the environment variables PYTHON_AKISMET_API_KEY and PYTHON_AKISMET_BLOG_URL, and they will be automatically detected and used.

You can also optionally set the environment variable PYTHON_AKISMET_TIMEOUT to a float or int containing a connection-timeout threshold to use for making requests to the Akismet web service; if not set, this will default to 1.0 (one second).

Installing for local development

If you want to work on akismet, you can obtain a source checkout.

The development repository for akismet is at <https://github.com/ubernostrum/akismet>. If you have git installed, you can obtain a copy of the repository by typing:

git clone https://github.com/ubernostrum/akismet.git

Then follow the instructions in the file CONTRIBUTING.rst in the root directory of the source checkout.