Python by ActiveState – Features

The #1 Python Solution
Used by Innovative Teams

Get secure, modern Python with advanced dependency management

We’re reimagining how you work with Python and virtual environments.

With ActiveState Python, developers get access to:

  • Security-first package management
  • Automated dependency resolution and easy solutions to dependency conflicts
  • Consistent, reproducible environments from dev to production
  • Automated builds from source code, including linked C libraries
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Python package management that makes developers lives easier

ActiveState Python is powered by the ActiveState Platform. It offers automated dependency management, distributed parallel cloud builds of dependencies from source, team collaboration tools, and a versatile CLI (our State Tool) —all without the need for build engineering or Windows and Linux expertise.

vulnerability remediation

Identify & Resolve Security Vulnerabilities Faster

Shortcut the lengthy remediation process of investigating, rebuilding, retesting, and updating runtime environments. The ActiveState Platform lets you find vulnerabilities, fix them, and automatically rebuild a secure version of your Python environment in minutes, decreasing Mean Time To Remediation (MTTR) from days to hours.

See how vulnerability remediation works


Enterprise-Grade Python Dependency Management

The ActiveState Platform automates dependency resolution, helping to ensure your environment contains known-good sets of dependencies that work together. Can’t resolve a dependency conflict? Let the ActiveState Platform resolve it for you, or at least tell you how to manually solve it yourself.

Read about our approach to dependency resolution

enterprise python dependency management

python environment CLI

Versatile CLI – our State Tool

Our all-new, open-source CLI, the State Tool, lets you manage your environment directly from the terminal, easily integrate with your existing CI/CD pipelines, and keep your team synchronized across platforms.


Built Fast from Source

The ActiveState Platform gives you access to a distributed, parallel build system so that even complex development environments can be automatically built and packaged for your OS in record time—straight from source code—giving you all the security assurances and flexibility that comes with it.

Read about Python security for enterprises

Multi-OS Universal Python Package Management

Use the same tooling across platforms to manage all your Python environments. Add, remove, update individual dependencies, or import your requirements.tx so you can get coding quicker.

Get a guide to package management

Revision Control

See a history of all changes to your environment with the ability to revert, fork, and merge changes between versions.

See how to revert to a previous commit

Common Development Environments

Keep teams synchronized with a centrally managed and updated Python environment all team members can share.

Read about package management for teams

Open Source Licensing

ActiveState Python and the modules you install via the command line are licensed under their original licenses.

More about ActiveState Platform licensing

Virtual Environments

Keep your projects sandboxed on your machine with a cross-platform, universal virtual environment solution that’s quicker and easier to use than venv, but still lets you run multiple versions of Python on your machine without worrying about dependency conflicts.

More about managing Python environments

Ready to give it a try?

You can start right away by installing ActiveState Python via your command line.

Free Download & Install

See how it works – CLI | See how it works – GUI | Need help? Head here – ActiveState Community Forums | Enterprise Support – Contact Sales

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Difference Between ActivePython and ActiveState Python?
Both ActivePython and ActiveState Python are 100% compatible with the open source packages you use today, but:

  • ActivePython is a pre-built Python distribution that contains a version of Python along with hundreds of popular packages. ActivePython is best suited for those that just want to run a program using Python, rather than use Python for software development purposes.
  • ActiveState Python contains a version of Python and a minimum of packages suitable for managing your environment. Once installed, you can then add just the packages your project requires. ActiveState Python is best suited for those that want to develop programs using Python.
What is the ActiveState Platform?
The ActiveState Platform is a universal package management solution for Python, as well as Perl and Tcl that lets you automatically build and manage language environments/distributions for all major OS’s with a single toolchain.
Why would I want to use the ActiveState Platform for Python?
The ActiveState Platform provides an alternative ecosystem for Python that offers a number of features and functionality over and above other Python distributions, including: 

  • Automated dependency resolution, including solutions to dependency conflicts. No more dependency hell.
  • Automated notifications when a vulnerability is discovered, allowing you to quickly remediate and automatically rebuild a secure environment
  • All packages and dependencies are built from source code, including linked C libraries, providing better security over using pre-built binaries.

There’s a bunch of other things that can help make your life easier as a professional Python Developer (including branching configurations, cross-platform scripting, eliminating “works only on my machine” issues, and more). For more information, read Python Package Management Guide for Enterprise Developers.

Does the ActiveState Platform act as a code repository?
No, we only deal with open source language components, we don’t deal with your code. We can accommodate your proprietary Python packages/libraries if so desired, however.
Why else would I want to use the ActiveState Platform for Python?
You might want to use it to help other developers get up and running on your project quicker. We’ll copy over the code from your GitHub repo and install it together with the runtime environment it requires to run — all with a single command.
Am I locked into your Python ecosystem?
Not at all. For instance, if you prefer to work with pip, our CLI (the State Tool) will respect your pip commands and our hosted repository will allow you to install pre-built Python wheels.
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