Uv vs Pip vs Poetry vs Pipenv - Which One Won't Make You Hate Your Life

The difference between 30 seconds and 3 minutes isn't just time. It's whether you lose your train of thought, start browsing Reddit, or decide to refactor something unrelated while waiting. Plus your CI pipeline burns money while sitting there resolving numpy.

The uv Reality Check

Uv is written in Rust which explains a lot. Everyone claims their tool is "10x faster" so I figured uv was more marketing bullshit. Then I actually tried it and watched Transformers install in 8 seconds while pip was still thinking about it. That's not marketing - that's actually useful.

Here's the thing nobody mentions in the docs: uv is new (2024) so weird shit happens. Like when secp256k1 wouldn't install and I got this beauty:

fatal error: 'openssl/crypto.h' file not found

Spent 3 hours thinking uv was broken before realizing I needed to tell it where Homebrew hid OpenSSL:
export CPPFLAGS=-I/opt/homebrew/include
export LDFLAGS=-L/opt/homebrew/lib

Classic M1 Mac bullshit, but still annoying when you just want to install a package.

Poetry: The Boring Choice That Works

Poetry works fine until it doesn't. It's faster than pip, has decent docs, and usually doesn't break on weekends. Lock files stay consistent and it handles pyproject.toml without being weird about it.

But here's where it gets annoying: memory usage goes insane with big dependency trees. I watched it use 6GB of RAM trying to resolve some conflict between NumPy and a random geospatial library that probably nobody uses. Also the keyring popup spam where it asks for your password 47 times because it forgot you already said yes.

Pip: The Reliable Old Bastard

Pip takes forever but at least it doesn't randomly fail on Friday at 5pm. It's the only thing guaranteed to work in ancient production environments, weird Docker containers, and servers maintained by people who think virtual environments are "too complicated."

Nothing tests your patience like pip's dependency resolver taking 4 minutes to figure out what should be obvious. But when uv breaks and Poetry crashes? Pip still works.

Pipenv: The Tool Everyone Tried and Abandoned

Most people tried Pipenv and then switched to something else after their lock file corrupted for the third time. It was supposed to fix the pip + virtualenv mess but instead gave you different problems. Still gets updates apparently, but most of the Python world moved on to Poetry and uv.

Use uv if You're Tired of Waiting

Pick uv when you're sick of staring at "Resolving dependencies..." for 5 minutes.

It's actually 10-100x faster which means you can install stuff and get back to coding instead of browsing Reddit.

Your CI builds finish before you remember what you were working on.

Perfect for:

• New projects where you can afford to debug edge cases
• CI/CD where speed saves real money (and developer sanity)
• Teams who want to consolidate tools (replaces pip, poetry, pyenv, virtualenv)
• Anyone sick of staring at "Resolving dependencies..." for 5 minutes

But here's what nobody tells you: you'll hit weird edge cases that break for no reason.

Like when uv fails with ModuleNotFoundError: No module named '_ssl' on Alpine Docker containers because it can't find OpenSSL.

Or when M1 Macs throw this nightmare:

`pip._vendor.urllib3.exceptions.

SSLError: [SSL:

CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED]`

Took me half a day to figure out you need --python-preference system and sometimes pip install --upgrade certifi to make it stop failing.

Use Poetry When You Want Something That Just Works

Poetry is what you use when you don't want surprises.

It's been around for 7+ years, has decent docs, and lock files don't randomly break.

Most Python teams use Poetry so you'll find help when shit goes wrong.

Poetry makes sense if:

• You want stability over bleeding-edge speed
• Your team doesn't like being beta testers
• You're publishing packages (works well)
• You don't want to debug new tools

Downside:

It's slower than uv and eats ridiculous amounts of RAM with complex dependencies.

But it usually works, which beats speed when you have deadlines.

Use pip When Everything Else Breaks

Pip is your backup plan.

When uv hits some weird edge case, when Poetry uses all your RAM, when Pipenv corrupts another lock file

• pip still works.

It's slow and boring but bulletproof.

You need pip for:

• Production deployments where you can't risk weird failures
• Old systems that don't support modern tools
• Docker containers where simple is better
• When debugging and you need something that definitely works

Don't use pip daily unless you like watching progress bars and questioning your life choices.

Skip Pipenv Unless You're Already Stuck With It

Most teams tried Pipenv and gave up after their lock file broke for the third time.

It still gets updates apparently, but everyone moved to Poetry or uv because they actually work.

If you're stuck with Pipenv and it works for your team, whatever. But don't start new projects with it.

Only use Pipenv if your company is weirdly committed to Pipfile workflows and you can't convince them to switch.