# NLTK vs spaCy

| Attribute | NLTK | spaCy |
|---|---|---|
| **Vioscale score** | 72.7 (21% (low)) | 49.2 (32% (low)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 100 | 13 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 57,572 | 15,793 |
| adoption.github_stars | 14,702 | 33,849 |
| deployment.options | - | `{"on_prem":true,"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | Provides access to linguistic corpora and text processing tools for tokenization, classification, parsing, and semantic analysis. Widely used in educational and research settings for computational linguistics work. | An open-source natural language processing library designed for building real-world applications. It excels at large-scale information extraction and has become an industry standard since 2015 with a robust ecosystem of plugins. |
| integrations.count | - | 1 |
| integrations.list | - | `[{"name":"PyTorch"}]` |
| language.primary | Python | Python |
| license.spdx | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| market.availability | - | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"cli":true,"mac":true,"linux":true,"windows":true}` | `{"cli":true,"mac":true,"linux":true,"windows":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"open_source","summary":"Free and open source","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://www.nltk.org","retrievedAt":"2026-08-20T12:51:01.320Z"}` | `{"type":"open_source","summary":"Free, open-source library","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://spacy.io","retrievedAt":"2026-08-19T14:46:03.884Z"}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | open_source | commercial |
| pricing.price_level | free | free |
| pricing.transparent | yes | - |
| release.cadence_days | 2 | 20 |
| release.history | `[{"url":"https://github.com/nltk/nltk/releases/tag/v3.10.3-rc1","date":"2026-08-12T22:28:22Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.10.3-rc1"},{"url":"https://github.com/nltk/nltk/releases/tag/v3.10.3","date":"2026-08-13T06:56:10Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.10.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/nltk/nltk/releases/tag/v3.10.2-rc1","date":"2026-08-05T08:52:22Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.10.2-rc1"},{"url":"https://github.com/nltk/nltk/releases/tag/v3.10.2","date":"2026-08-05T10:02:22Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.10.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/nltk/nltk/releases/tag/v3.10.1-rc2","date":"2026-07-29T15:05:36Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.10.1-rc2"},{"url":"https://github.com/nltk/nltk/releases/tag/v3.10.1-rc1","date":"2026-07-27T08:37:09Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.10.1-rc1"},{"url":"https://github.com/nltk/nltk/releases/tag/v3.10.0","date":"2026-08-05T09:57:11Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.10.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/nltk/nltk/releases/tag/v3.10.0-rc1","date":"2026-06-11T21:07:13Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.10.0-rc1"}]` | `[{"url":"https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/releases/tag/release-v3.8.16","date":"2026-08-24T10:01:11Z","type":"stable","version":"release-v3.8.16"},{"url":"https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/releases/tag/release-v3.8.15","date":"2026-08-07T17:13:19Z","type":"stable","version":"release-v3.8.15"},{"url":"https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/releases/tag/release-v3.8.14","date":"2026-03-29T07:47:14Z","type":"stable","version":"release-v3.8.14"},{"url":"https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/releases/tag/release-v3.8.13","date":"2026-03-23T17:40:51Z","type":"stable","version":"release-v3.8.13"},{"url":"https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/releases/tag/release-v3.8.12","date":"2026-03-23T13:33:37Z","type":"stable","version":"release-v3.8.12"},{"url":"https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/releases/tag/release-v3.8.11","date":"2025-11-17T20:37:38Z","type":"stable","version":"release-v3.8.11"},{"url":"https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/releases/tag/release-v3.8.10","date":"2025-11-17T15:54:29Z","type":"stable","version":"release-v3.8.10"},{"url":"https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/releases/tag/release-v3.8.9","date":"2025-11-13T14:57:22Z","type":"stable","version":"release-v3.8.9"},{"url":"https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/releases/tag/release-v3.8.8","date":"2025-11-07T09:26:30Z","type":"stable","version":"release-v3.8.8"},{"url":"https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/releases/tag/release-v3.8.7","date":"2025-05-23T08:53:14Z","type":"stable","version":"release-v3.8.7"},{"url":"https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/releases/tag/release-v3.8.6","date":"2025-05-19T07:52:28Z","type":"stable","version":"release-v3.8.6"},{"url":"https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/releases/tag/release-v3.8.3","date":"2024-12-11T13:11:38Z","type":"stable","version":"release-v3.8.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/releases/tag/release-v3.8.2","date":"2024-10-01T18:19:33Z","type":"stable","version":"release-v3.8.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/releases/tag/prerelease-v3.8.0.dev0","date":"2024-09-09T14:19:15Z","type":"prerelease","version":"prerelease-v3.8.0.dev0"},{"url":"https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/releases/tag/prerelease-v3.7.6a","date":"2024-08-20T10:09:49Z","type":"prerelease","version":"prerelease-v3.7.6a"},{"url":"https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/releases/tag/v3.7.5","date":"2024-06-05T07:57:36Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.7.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/releases/tag/v3.7.4","date":"2024-02-15T19:16:59Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.7.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/releases/tag/v3.7.2","date":"2023-10-16T16:11:22Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.7.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/releases/tag/v3.7.1","date":"2023-10-05T06:46:15Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.7.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/explosion/spaCy/releases/tag/v3.7.0","date":"2023-10-02T09:10:08Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.7.0"}]` |
| security.scorecard | 4.8 | 5.2 |
| security.vulnerabilities | `{"count":20,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=pypi&package_name=nltk&per_page=100","last_12m":15,"max_severity":"CRITICAL"}` | `{"count":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=pypi&package_name=spacy&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` |

## Capabilities (NLP Apis)

| Capability | NLTK | spaCy |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Capabilities** |  |  |
| Custom model training | - | - |
| Domain specific models | - | - |
| Deployment model | - | - |
| Batch processing | - | - |
| Real time latency | - | - |
| Embeddings endpoint | - | - |
| Data residency EU | - | - |
| Open source | - | - |
| Pricing model | - | - |

*Source: Vioscale. Generated 2026-09-01T16:48:54.108Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*