# What is the difference between virtualenv, pipenv & venv?

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# Introduction:

`virtualenv`, `pipenv`, `venv` all serves the same purpose, **isolating** your third party packages installed by **Python** package manager `pip` in a **virtual** **environment**, separated from your system level **Python** dependencies.

But they have certain set of differences in terms of the way how they store your environments and also the speed at which they complete the task for you.

## `virtualenv`:

It is the by far the most used **virtual** **environment** tool to manage your pip packages in an **isolated** **environment**.

It works by installing a bunch of files in a directory (e.g. `env/`), and then modifying the PATH environment variable to prefix it with a custom bin directory (e.g. `env/bin/`).

To use it, all you have to do is **install** it, create an **environment**, then **activate** it, and you are ready to **install** the **pip** packages.

To share your **pip** packages across multiple systems, we need to create a `requirements.txt` file, which can be easily done with this command:

```bash
pip freeze > requirements.txt
```

## `pipenv`:

`pipenv` is similar to `virtualenv`, it has one extra feature, which is `Pipfile`, `Pipfile` is similat to what we see as `packages.json` in `npm`.

`Pipfile` contains all the **installed** packages in the current environment, and automatically updates itself if you install a new package inside the same environment.

Although in my personal opinion, `pipenv` is kinda slow compared to `virtualenv` but it comes with some extra features.

Basically, `pipenv` aims to combine `Pipfile`, `pip` and `virtualenv` into one command.

## `venv`:

It serves the same purpose as `virtualenv`, but only has a subset of its features. As per official docs:

> `*venv` provides support for creating lightweight **virtual environments** with their own site directories in isolation.\*

In many **Linux** distributions, `venv` comes preinstalled with **Python 3,** you can verify it using this command:

```bash
python3 -m venv -h
```

# Conclusion:

All of them are good, go for `virtualenv` as it is most easy to use, and efficient tool. Otherwise, you have other choices, spend some more time with each of them, even there are some more like `pyenv` , `pyenv-virtualenv`, `virtualenvwrapper` etc.

It's your personal choice, but you give a try to at least few of them.

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