How to Install `faiss-cpu` in Python

v1.13.2 Data & Science Python <3.15,>=3.10

A library for efficient similarity search and clustering of dense vectors.

Install pip install faiss-cpu

What is faiss-cpu?

A library for efficient similarity search and clustering of dense vectors.

This repository provides CI scripts to build wheel packages for the faiss library.

- Builds wheels with cibuildwheel. - Build backend uses scikit-build-core. - Default BLAS backend is OpenBLAS on Linux/Windows and the Accelerate framework on macOS. - Support various build options for customization.

The PyPI distributed wheels include the following extentions.

PyPI page → Author: Kota Yamaguchi <[email protected]>

Quick Start

Minimal example to get started with faiss-cpu:

import faiss_cpu

print(faiss_cpu.__version__)

Installation

pip (standard)

pip install faiss-cpu

Virtual environment (recommended)

python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate   # Windows: venv\Scripts\activate
pip install faiss-cpu

pip3

pip3 install faiss-cpu

conda

conda install -c conda-forge faiss-cpu

Poetry

poetry add faiss-cpu

Dependencies

Installing faiss-cpu will also install these packages:

numpy packaging

Verify the Installation

After installing, confirm the package is available:

python -c "import faiss_cpu; print(faiss_cpu.__version__)"

If this prints a version number, installation succeeded. If you see a ModuleNotFoundError, see the errors section below.

Installation Errors

Common errors when installing faiss-cpu with pip.

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'faiss_cpu'

Cause: The package is not installed in the current Python environment.

Fix: Run pip install faiss-cpu. If using a virtual environment, ensure it is activated first.

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'faiss_cpu' (installed but still failing)

Cause: pip installed the package into a different Python than the one running your script.

Fix: Use python -m pip install faiss-cpu to install into the interpreter you are running.

ImportError: cannot import name 'X' from 'faiss_cpu'

Cause: The function or class does not exist in the installed version.

Fix: Check the version with pip show faiss-cpu and upgrade with pip install --upgrade faiss-cpu.

pip: command not found

Cause: pip is not in PATH or Python was not added to PATH during installation.

Fix: Try python -m pip install faiss-cpu. On macOS/Linux try pip3.

PermissionError: [Errno 13] Permission denied

Cause: No write access to the system Python package directory.

Fix: Use a virtual environment, or add --user: pip install --user faiss-cpu

SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED

Cause: pip cannot verify PyPI's SSL certificate — common behind corporate proxies.

Fix: Try: pip install --trusted-host pypi.org --trusted-host files.pythonhosted.org faiss-cpu

MemoryError when loading data

Cause: Dataset is too large to fit in RAM.

Fix: Read in chunks, filter columns on load, or consider Polars/Dask for out-of-core processing.

Recent Releases

Version	Released
`1.13.2` latest	2025-12-24
`1.13.1`	2025-12-05
`1.13.0`	2025-11-17
`1.12.0`	2025-08-13
`1.11.0.post1`	2025-07-15

Full release history on PyPI →

Manage faiss-cpu

Upgrade to latest version

pip install --upgrade faiss-cpu

Install a specific version

pip install faiss-cpu==1.13.2

Uninstall

pip uninstall faiss-cpu

Check what is installed

pip show faiss-cpu

Last updated: 2026-04-11 • Data from PyPI

How to Install faiss-cpu in Python