alive-progress
Rich animated progress bar library for Python — provides beautiful, informative progress bars with animations, ETA, and throughput display. alive-progress features: alive_bar() context manager, automatic ETA calculation, throughput display (items/sec), manual() for manual progress control, unknown total support, pause() for interactive inspection, title and status text, 50+ animation styles and bar styles, force_tty for CI/CD, skip_if_not_interactive, dual_line for longer status, enrich_print for aligned output, and monkeypatch of tqdm for drop-in replacement. Designed to be engaging and informative.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
Terminal display library with no network calls. No security concerns. Progress bar text (bar.text()) content is displayed to terminal — avoid including sensitive values in progress text.
⚡ Reliability
Best When
CLI agent tools needing engaging progress display — alive-progress provides the most visually appealing progress bars with accurate ETA and throughput, ideal for long-running agent operations.
Avoid When
Non-interactive/CI environments (use tqdm with CI mode), web progress (use SSE), or minimal dependency requirements (use tqdm).
Use Cases
- • Agent batch processing — from alive_progress import alive_bar; with alive_bar(len(items)) as bar: for item in items: process(item); bar() — animated progress bar; agent batch processing shows progress with ETA; bar() call advances bar; each iteration shows items/sec throughput
- • Agent unknown total — with alive_bar() as bar: for item in stream: process(item); bar() — no total; agent processes indefinite stream; alive-progress shows spinner and throughput without ETA when total unknown; estimated total from throughput history
- • Agent manual progress — with alive_bar(100, manual=True) as bar: for step in pipeline_steps: result = run_step(step); bar(result.progress_pct) — percentage-based progress; agent pipeline with unequal step sizes updates bar by percentage not count; manual=True allows fractional progress
- • Agent pause for inspection — with alive_bar(len(items)) as bar: for item in items: process(item); bar(); if suspicious(item): bar.pause(); inspect(item); input('Continue?') — interactive pause; agent processing pauses for user inspection of specific items; bar resumes after input()
- • Agent CI-compatible — with alive_bar(len(items), force_tty=True) as bar: ... — force output; alive-progress detects non-TTY and disables animation; force_tty=True enables animation even in redirected output; for CI logs: alive_bar(..., file=sys.stderr) keeps progress out of captured stdout
Not For
- • Non-interactive scripts — alive-progress is designed for terminal display; for logging-based progress use Python logging with percentage
- • Web progress — alive-progress is terminal-only; for web progress use server-sent events or WebSocket
- • Lightweight alternative — alive-progress has more dependencies than tqdm; for minimal footprint use tqdm
Interface
Authentication
No auth — local terminal UI library.
Pricing
alive-progress is MIT licensed. Free for all use.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ bar() must be called inside context manager — with alive_bar(total) as bar: bar() advances; calling bar outside the with block raises error; agent code must call bar() inside the alive_bar() context; lambda or callback patterns must capture bar reference within context
- ⚠ Print inside alive_bar context needs enrich_print — regular print() inside alive_bar() context interferes with progress bar rendering; alive-progress monkey-patches print automatically; or use: with alive_bar(total) as bar: bar.text('current item') for status text instead of print(); or configure: config_handler.set_global(enrich_print=True)
- ⚠ Non-TTY silently disables progress — alive_bar() in CI/cron job with redirected output: no progress shown, no error; agent CI that captures stdout sees nothing; use: alive_bar(..., force_tty=True) to force rendering; or redirect to stderr: alive_bar(..., file=sys.stderr)
- ⚠ Unknown total shows spinner not bar — alive_bar() without total shows spinner animation (no percentage/ETA); alive_bar(total=None) explicitly sets unknown; agent estimating total from first sample: measure first few items, estimate total, then pass to alive_bar for better display
- ⚠ calibrate parameter for fast iterations — for very fast processing (10000+ items/sec): alive_bar(total, calibrate=50) shows every 50 items as 1 on bar; without calibrate: terminal update overhead dominates; auto-calibration available but manual tuning improves performance
- ⚠ manual=True requires 0.0-1.0 float — bar(0.5) in manual mode sets bar to 50%; bar() in count mode advances by 1; mixing modes causes ValueError; agent progress as percentage must set manual=True at creation and always call bar(0.0 to 1.0)
Alternatives
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Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-06.