Comparing
Composable command line interface toolkit
Render rich text, tables, progress bars, syntax highlighting, markdown and more to the terminal
| Metric | click | rich |
|---|---|---|
| Ecosystem | Python | Python |
| Difficulty | Beginner | Beginner |
| Weekly downloads | 0 | 0↑ |
| Latest version | v8.3.1 | v14.3.3 |
| Recipes | 2↑ | 1 |
click only
Shared
rich only
Use Click for any CLI tool you're distributing or that has more than 2-3 arguments. It's the standard choice for Python CLIs, especially when you need subcommands (like git-style interfaces), prompts, progress bars, or colored output.
Use Rich in any CLI tool or long-running script where you want readable output: progress bars for downloads or processing loops, syntax-highlighted code, formatted tables, structured log output, or pretty-printed Python objects for debugging.
For extremely simple one-argument scripts, argparse or even sys.argv is fine. If you want type hints to drive the CLI automatically, look at Typer (which wraps Click under the hood).
Rich adds 1-2MB to your package size and a startup cost. For library code that should be output-agnostic, stick to logging. For applications deployed purely as web services with no terminal interaction, Rich adds nothing.
click
rich