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Bcrypt

Modern(-ish) password hashing for your software and your servers

Install / Use

/learn @pyca/Bcrypt
About this skill

Quality Score

0/100

Supported Platforms

Universal

Tags

README

bcrypt

.. image:: https://img.shields.io/pypi/v/bcrypt.svg :target: https://pypi.org/project/bcrypt/ :alt: Latest Version

.. image:: https://github.com/pyca/bcrypt/workflows/CI/badge.svg?branch=main :target: https://github.com/pyca/bcrypt/actions?query=workflow%3ACI+branch%3Amain

Acceptable password hashing for your software and your servers (but you should really use argon2id or scrypt)

Installation

To install bcrypt, simply:

.. code:: console

$ pip install bcrypt

Note that bcrypt should build very easily on Linux provided you have a C compiler and a Rust compiler (the minimum supported Rust version is 1.74.0).

For Debian and Ubuntu, the following command will ensure that the required dependencies are installed:

.. code:: console

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential cargo

For Fedora and RHEL-derivatives, the following command will ensure that the required dependencies are installed:

.. code:: console

$ sudo yum install gcc cargo

For Alpine, the following command will ensure that the required dependencies are installed:

.. code:: console

$ apk add --update musl-dev gcc cargo

Alternatives

While bcrypt remains an acceptable choice for password storage, depending on your specific use case you may also want to consider using scrypt (either via standard library_ or cryptography) or argon2id via argon2_cffi.

Changelog

The changelog is maintained in CHANGELOG.rst <https://github.com/pyca/bcrypt/blob/main/CHANGELOG.rst>_

Usage

Password Hashing


Hashing and then later checking that a password matches the previous hashed
password is very simple:

.. code:: pycon

    >>> import bcrypt
    >>> password = b"super secret password"
    >>> # Hash a password for the first time, with a randomly-generated salt
    >>> hashed = bcrypt.hashpw(password, bcrypt.gensalt())
    >>> # Check that an unhashed password matches one that has previously been
    >>> # hashed
    >>> if bcrypt.checkpw(password, hashed):
    ...     print("It Matches!")
    ... else:
    ...     print("It Does not Match :(")

KDF
~~~

As of 3.0.0 ``bcrypt`` now offers a ``kdf`` function which does ``bcrypt_pbkdf``.
This KDF is used in OpenSSH's newer encrypted private key format.

.. code:: pycon

    >>> import bcrypt
    >>> key = bcrypt.kdf(
    ...     password=b'password',
    ...     salt=b'salt',
    ...     desired_key_bytes=32,
    ...     rounds=100)


Adjustable Work Factor

One of bcrypt's features is an adjustable logarithmic work factor. To adjust the work factor merely pass the desired number of rounds to bcrypt.gensalt(rounds=12) which defaults to 12):

.. code:: pycon

>>> import bcrypt
>>> password = b"super secret password"
>>> # Hash a password for the first time, with a certain number of rounds
>>> hashed = bcrypt.hashpw(password, bcrypt.gensalt(14))
>>> # Check that a unhashed password matches one that has previously been
>>> #   hashed
>>> if bcrypt.checkpw(password, hashed):
...     print("It Matches!")
... else:
...     print("It Does not Match :(")

Adjustable Prefix


Another one of bcrypt's features is an adjustable prefix to let you define what
libraries you'll remain compatible with. To adjust this, pass either ``2a`` or
``2b`` (the default) to ``bcrypt.gensalt(prefix=b"2b")`` as a bytes object.

As of 3.0.0 the ``$2y$`` prefix is still supported in ``hashpw`` but deprecated.

Maximum Password Length

Passing hashpw a password longer than 72 bytes now raises a ValueError. Previously the password was silently truncated, following the behavior of the original OpenBSD bcrypt implementation. To work around this, a common approach is to hash a password with a cryptographic hash (such as sha256) and then base64 encode it to prevent NULL byte problems before hashing the result with bcrypt:

.. code:: pycon

>>> password = b"an incredibly long password" * 10
>>> hashed = bcrypt.hashpw(
...     base64.b64encode(hashlib.sha256(password).digest()),
...     bcrypt.gensalt()
... )

Compatibility

This library should be compatible with py-bcrypt and it will run on Python 3.8+ (including free-threaded builds), and PyPy 3.

Security

bcrypt follows the same security policy as cryptography_, if you identify a vulnerability, we ask you to contact us privately.

.. _same security policy as cryptography: https://cryptography.io/en/latest/security.html .. _standard library: https://docs.python.org/3/library/hashlib.html#hashlib.scrypt .. _argon2_cffi: https://argon2-cffi.readthedocs.io .. _cryptography: https://cryptography.io/en/latest/hazmat/primitives/key-derivation-functions/#cryptography.hazmat.primitives.kdf.scrypt.Scrypt

Related Skills

View on GitHub
GitHub Stars1.5k
CategoryDevelopment
Updated9h ago
Forks213

Languages

Python

Security Score

95/100

Audited on Mar 30, 2026

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