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Tkinter VS PyQt

Compare Tkinter VS PyQt and see what are their differences

Tkinter logo Tkinter

Tkinter is a Python wrapper for Tcl/Tk that offers classes to create various graphical user interfaces.

PyQt logo PyQt

Riverbank | Software | PyQt | What is PyQt?
  • Tkinter Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-28
  • PyQt Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-18

Tkinter features and specs

  • Built-in Standard Library
    Tkinter comes bundled with Python, so there is no need for additional installations. This makes it highly accessible and quick to set up for projects.
  • Ease of Use
    Tkinter provides a simple syntax and an easy-to-understand system for building GUI applications, making it ideal for beginners who are just starting with programming.
  • Cross-Platform Compatibility
    Tkinter applications can run on multiple operating systems like Windows, macOS, and Linux without modification, which ensures broader audience reach.
  • Strong Community Support
    Being part of Python's standard library means that Tkinter benefits from Python's extensive community support, with plenty of tutorials and resources available online.
  • Object-Oriented Approach
    Tkinter supports an object-oriented programming model, which allows for structuring code in a manageable way, especially for larger applications.

Possible disadvantages of Tkinter

  • Limited Widget Set
    Compared to more modern GUI frameworks, Tkinter has a limited set of widgets and may not support advanced user interface features that newer applications might require.
  • Outdated Look and Feel
    The default Tkinter themes and styles may look outdated by modern standards, which might not be suitable for applications where a contemporary design is important.
  • Performance Limitations
    Tkinter may not perform well with applications requiring high-performance graphics or real-time updates, as it is not optimized for these tasks.
  • Learning Curve for Complex Applications
    While simple to use for basic applications, building more complex UI components can become challenging and might require a deeper understanding of the Tkinter framework.
  • Lack of Advanced Features
    Some advanced features like drag-and-drop, custom widgets, or native look and feel on different platforms might be either missing or require additional work to implement.

PyQt features and specs

  • Comprehensive UI library
    PyQt provides a wide range of UI components, from basic widgets to advanced tools. This allows for the creation of highly sophisticated interfaces.
  • Cross-platform
    Applications built with PyQt can run on different operating systems such as Windows, macOS, and Linux without requiring significant changes in the code.
  • Integration with Qt Designer
    Developers can use Qt Designer to design and implement their UIs visually, which can then be seamlessly integrated with Python code in PyQt.
  • Powerful event handling
    PyQt includes a highly efficient event handling system that makes it easy to manage user interactions and system events.
  • Good documentation and community support
    PyQt is well-documented, and there's a large community of developers who can provide support and share resources.
  • Python-specific advantages
    Leveraging Python's simplicity and readability, PyQt allows for rapid development and easy maintenance of applications.

Possible disadvantages of PyQt

  • License considerations
    PyQt is available under the GPL and a commercial license. If you want to create proprietary software without open-sourcing your code, you need to purchase a commercial license.
  • Steep learning curve
    While PyQt is powerful, it can have a steep learning curve for newcomers, particularly those who are not familiar with Qt and its paradigms.
  • Performance overhead
    Being a binding for Qt, some operations may have extra overhead compared to native Qt applications written in C++.
  • Dependency on external libraries
    PyQt relies on the Qt library, which means that you have to manage and distribute these dependencies along with your application.
  • Large binary sizes
    Applications created with PyQt can result in relatively large binary sizes because of the included Qt binaries.
  • Fragmentation of tools
    There can be fragmentation concerns, as PyQt must stay in sync with Qt, and different versions of Qt may introduce changes that are not immediately reflected in PyQt.

Tkinter videos

Which is Better Kivy Or Tkinter? - Python Kivy GUI Tutorial #42

More videos:

  • Review - Python Programming 93 - Review of Tkinter
  • Tutorial - Tkinter Course - Create Graphic User Interfaces in Python Tutorial

PyQt videos

Python Top 3 GUI Frameworks In 2019 (PyQt5, wxPython, TKinter)

More videos:

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Tkinter and PyQt)
Developer Tools
58 58%
42% 42
Development Tools
35 35%
65% 65
Rapid Application Development
Development
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Tkinter and PyQt

Tkinter Reviews

25 Python Frameworks to Master
It’s a great option for creating simple and easy-to-use graphical user interfaces in Python and allows you to add a GUI to your already working scripts pretty easily. PySimpleGUI wraps the power of 4 different GUI libraries, PySide, Tkinter, wxPython, and Remi.
Source: kinsta.com
Which Python GUI library should you use? Comparing the Python GUI libraries available in 2023
Tkinter is a simple library with support for standard layouts and widgets, as well as more complex widgets such as tabbed views & progressbars. Tkinter is a pure GUI library, not a framework. There is no built-in support for GUIs driven from data sources, databases, or for displaying or manipulating multimedia or hardware. However, if you need to make something simple that...
10 Best Python Libraries for GUI
Another top Python library for GUI is Tkinter, which is an open-source Python Graphic User Interface library. It is well known for its simplicity and comes pre-installed in Python, meaning there is no work on your part. These features make it a great choice for beginners and intermediates, but it is not capable of carrying out larger-scale projects.
Source: www.unite.ai
Top 10 Python GUI Frameworks for Developers
Often referred to as the go-to GUI toolkit by a majority of Python developers, Tkinter was created to equip modern developers with a standard interface to the Tk GUI toolkit with its Python bindings. In Tkinter’s world, most of the visual elements that we’re familiar with are called widgets, and each of these widgets offers a different level of customizability.

PyQt Reviews

25 Python Frameworks to Master
PyQt is one of the most popular sets of Python bindings for the Qt cross-platform application framework. This framework perfectly combines the simplicity of Python as a general-purpose language and the powerful Qt application framework built in C++.
Source: kinsta.com
Which Python GUI library should you use? Comparing the Python GUI libraries available in 2023
Before the Qt Company (under Nokia) released the officially supported PySide library in 2009, Riverbank Computing had released PyQt in 1998. The main difference between these two libraries is in licensing. The free-to-use version of PyQt is licensed under GNU General Public License (GPL) v3 but PySide is licensed under GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). This means...
10 Best Python Libraries for GUI
Developed by Riverbank Computing, PyQt5 is one of the most popular Python frameworks for GUI. The PyQt package is built around the Qt framework, which is a cross-platform framework used for creating various applications on different platforms.
Source: www.unite.ai
Top 10 Python GUI Frameworks for Developers
When it comes to creating GUIs, the PyQt5 arsenal offers the impressive QtGui and the QtDesigner module, which provide numerous visual elements that the developer can implement with a simple drag and drop. Of course, the option of creating these elements by code also exists, allowing you to create both small-scale as well as large-scale applications with ease. Python’s...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Tkinter should be more popular than PyQt. It has been mentiond 37 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Tkinter mentions (37)

  • Building a Lightweight OCR-Powered Receipt Parser
    Tkinter Documentation – Official Python Tkinter library documentation. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • The Adventures of Blink S2e7: A GUI Screen in Python
    For our hangman, I've elected to use Tkinter. It has a pre-built collection of little widgets that make dialog-based apps work, and I think it will be useful for Hangman, which doesn't require a great deal of animation and image management but does require us to have an easy-to-use interface for the user to make changes. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Ask HN: How popular is Tcl in 2024?
    >> So it's hard for me to recommend tk for GUI development. Tcl/Tk is widely used in lightweight legacy GUIs. Python distributions will typically include tkinter (https://docs.python.org/3/library/tkinter.html) which is just a Python wrapper for Tk. Git usually includes the gitk graphical utility which is written in Tcl/TK: - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • A brief interview with Tcl creator John Ousterhout
    Lots of people care about it, and it's alive and kicking in-industry and being developed (Tcl 9 is imminent[0]). I've had fun w Guile over the years (though actually never considered its "heaviness"); fun. I'm constantly amazed at the professional love for Python; its got it's network effect in full-effect: lots of people, lots of software - there's just no denying that. But for Joy of Development, Tcl (and C) is... - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
  • Essential Deep Learning Checklist: Best Practices Unveiled
    How to Accomplish: Create a simple interface (CLI or GUI) where users can input an image, and the script processes and displays the model's prediction. For a CLI, use argparse to handle input arguments. For a GUI, consider libraries like Tkinter or web-based interfaces using FastAPI or Flask. The script should perform necessary preprocessing, invoke the model prediction, and present the results clearly, such as... - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
View more

PyQt mentions (4)

  • Python vs. JavaScript: Is It a Fair Comparison?
    JavaScript is a clear winner in the category of mobile development. There are some niche frameworks to do mobile development with Python—like Kivy and PyQT—but pretty much nobody uses them. - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
  • what would be the best looking GUI framework to develop a desktop python application? (other than Tkinter)
    If none of those are to your liking, you can use PyQT (or Pyside) but the learning curve is much steeper. Source: almost 3 years ago
  • Is there a "Windows Forms" GUI designer for Python?
    Also, there is the PyQt module which is a comprehensive set of Python bindings for the Qt GUI. It has Qt Designer. Source: over 3 years ago
  • Best way to install qutebrowser?
    As for PyQt, that's developed entirely independently from Qt (by Riverbank Computing). The major/minor versions usually line up with the respective Qt releases (since the Qt release introduces new APIs, so a new PyQt release is needed to expose those to Python). However, it's versioned independently, and a new patch release of PyQt might be needed before/without Qt releasing a new patch release. For more details,... Source: about 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Tkinter and PyQt, you can also consider the following products

PySimpleGUI - A simple to use GUI that can create custom GUIs

Qt - Powerful, flexible and easy to use, Qt will help you not only meet your tight deadline, but also reduce the maintainable code by an astonishing percentage.

MD Python Designer - A drag and drop GUI Designer that uses a combination of Tkinter and its own code.

wxWidgets - wxWidgets: Cross-Platform GUI Library

GTK - GTK+ is a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces.

Dear PyGui - Dear PyGui is a simple to use (but powerful) Python GUI framework. Dear PyGui provides a wrapping of Dear ImGui which simulates a traditional retained mode GUI (as opposed to Dear ImGui's immediate mode paradigm).