Annotated version of this introductory video
Datasette is a tool for exploring and publishing data. It helps people take data of any shape, analyze and explore it, and publish it as an interactive website and accompanying API.
Datasette is aimed at data journalists, museum curators, archivists, local governments, scientists, researchers and anyone else who has data that they wish to share with the world. It is part of a wider ecosystem of 46 tools and 156 plugins dedicated to making working with structured data as productive as possible.
Try a demo and explore 33,000 power plants around the world, then follow the tutorial or take a look at some other examples of Datasette in action.
Then read how to get started with Datasette, subscribe to the monthly-ish newsletter and consider signing up for office hours for an in-person conversation about the project.
New: Datasette Desktop - a macOS desktop application for easily running Datasette on your own computer!
Exploratory data analysis
Import data from CSVs, JSON, database connections and more. Datasette will automatically show you patterns in your data and help you share your findings with your colleagues.
Instant data publishing
datasette publish
lets you instantly publish your data to hosting providers like Google Cloud Run, Heroku or Vercel.
Rapid prototyping
Spin up a JSON API for any data in minutes. Use it to prototype and prove your ideas without building a custom backend.
Latest news
6th February 2025 #
Datasette 1.0a17 is the latest Datasette 1.0 alpha release, with bug fixes and small feature improvements from the last few months.
7th October 2024 #
Python 3.13 was released today. Datasette 1.0a16 is compatible with Python 3.13, but Datasette 0.64.8 was not. The new Datasette 0.65 release fixes compatibility with the new version of Python.
5th August 2024 #
Datasette 1.0a14 includes some breaking changes to how metadata works for plugins, described in detail in the new upgrade guide. See also the annotated release notes that accompany this release.
18th February 2024 #
Datasette 1.0a10 is a focused alpha that changes some internal details about how Datasette handles transactions. The datasette.execute_write_fn()
internal method now wraps the function in a database transaction unless you pass transaction=False
.
16th February 2024 #
Datasette 1.0a9 adds basic alter table support to the JSON API, tweaks how permissions works and introduces some new plugin debugging utilities.
7th February 2024 #
Datasette 1.0a8 introduces several new plugin hooks, a JavaScript plugin system and moves plugin configuration from metadata.yaml
to datasette.yaml
. Read more about the release in the annotated release notes for 1.0a8.
1st December 2023 #
Datasette Enrichments is a new feature for Datasette that supports enriching data by running custom code against every selected row in a table. Read Datasette Enrichments: a new plugin framework for augmenting your data for more details, plus a video demo of enrichments for geocoding addresses and processing text and images using GPT-4.
30th November 2023 #
datasette-comments is a new plugin by Alex Garcia which adds collaborative commenting to Datasette. Alex built the plugin for Datasette Cloud, but it's also available as an open source package for people who are hosting their own Datasette instances. See Annotate and explore your data with datasette-comments on the Datasette Cloud blog for more details.
22nd August 2023 #
Datasette 1.0a4 has a fix for a security vulnerability in the Datasette 1.0 alpha series: the API explorer interface exposed the names of private databases and tables in public instances that were protected by a plugin such as datasette-auth-passwords, though not the actual content of those tables. See the security advisory for more details and workarounds for if you can't upgrade immediately. The latest edition of the Datasette Newsletter also talks about this issue.
15th August 2023 #
datasette-write-ui: a Datasette plugin for editing, inserting, and deleting rows introduces a new plugin adding add/edit/delete functionality to Datasette, developed by Alex Garcia. Alex built this for Datasette Cloud, and this post is the first announcement made on the new Datasette Cloud blog - see also Welcome to Datasette Cloud.
9th August 2023 #
Datasette 1.0a3 is an alpha release of Datasette that previews the new default JSON API design that’s coming in version 1.0 - the single most significant change planned for that 1.0 release.
1st July 2023 #
New tutorial: Data analysis with SQLite and Python. This tutorial, originally presented at PyCon 2023, includes a 2h45m video and an extensive handout that should be useful with or without the video. Topics covered include Python's sqlite3
module, sqlite-utils
, Datasette, Datasette Lite, advanced SQL patterns and more.
24th March 2023 #
I built a ChatGPT plugin to answer questions about data hosted in Datasette describes a new experimental Datasette plugin to enable people to query data hosted in a Datasette interface via ChatGPT, asking human language questions that are automatically converted to SQL and used to generate a readable response.
23rd February 2023 #
Using Datasette in GitHub Codespaces is a new tutorial showing how Datasette can be run in GitHub's free Codespaces browser-based development environments, using the new datasette-codespaces plugin.
28th January 2023 #
Examples of sites built using Datasette now includes screenshots of Datasette deployments that illustrate a variety of problems that can be addressed using Datasette and its plugins.
Latest releases
17th February 2025
llm 0.22 - A CLI utility and Python library for interacting with Large Language Models, including OpenAI, PaLM and local models installed on your own machine.
See also LLM 0.22, the annotated release notes.
- Plugins that provide models that use API keys can now subclass the new
llm.KeyModel
andllm.AsyncKeyModel
classes. This results in the API key being passed as a newkey
parameter to their.execute()
methods, and means that Python users can pass a key as themodel.prompt(..., key=)
- see Passing an API key. Plugin developers should consult the new documentation on writing Models that accept API keys. #744 - New OpenAI model:
chatgpt-4o-latest
. This model ID accesses the current model being used to power ChatGPT, which can change without warning. #752 - New
llm logs -s/--short
flag, which returns a greatly shortened version of the matching log entries in YAML format with a truncated prompt and without including the response. #737 - Both
llm models
andllm embed-models
now take multiple-q
search fragments. You can now search for all models matching "gemini" and "exp" usingllm models -q gemini -q exp
. #748 - New
llm embed-multi --prepend X
option for prepending a string to each value before it is embedded - useful for models such as nomic-embed-text-v2-moe that require passages to start with a string like"search_document: "
. #745 - The
response.json()
andresponse.usage()
methods are now documented. - Fixed a bug where conversations that were loaded from the database could not be continued using
asyncio
prompts. #742 - New plugin for macOS users: llm-mlx, which provides extremely high performance access to a wide range of local models using Apple's MLX framework.
- The
llm-claude-3
plugin has been renamed to llm-anthropic.
14th February 2025
datasette-public 0.3a1 - Make specific Datasette tables visible to the public
- Changes are now recorded to a
public_audit_log
table, which is visible on the table and database permission editing pages. #11
13th February 2025
shot-scraper 1.6 - A command-line utility for taking automated screenshots of websites
- New
shot-scraper har URL
command for creating an HTML Archive of a page. #146 shot-scraper multi --har
and--har-zip
and--har-file
options for creating an HTML Archive of multiple pages. #166shot-scraper pdf
now has--wait-for
and--timeout
options. Thanks, miccou. #161
6th February 2025
datasette-public 0.3a0 - Make specific Datasette tables visible to the public
datasette 1.0a17 - An open source multi-tool for exploring and publishing data
DATASETTE_SSL_KEYFILE
andDATASETTE_SSL_CERTFILE
environment variables as alternatives to--ssl-keyfile
and--ssl-certfile
. Thanks, Alex Garcia. (#2422)SQLITE_EXTENSIONS
environment variable has been renamed toDATASETTE_LOAD_EXTENSION
. (#2424)datasette serve
environment variables are now documented here.- The register_magic_parameters(datasette) plugin hook can now register async functions. (#2441)
- Datasette is now tested against Python 3.13.
- Breadcrumbs on database and table pages now include a consistent self-link for resetting query string parameters. (#2454)
- Fixed issue where Datasette could crash on
metadata.json
with nested values. (#2455) - New internal methods
datasette.set_actor_cookie()
anddatasette.delete_actor_cookie()
, described here. (#1690) /-/permissions
page now shows a list of all permissions registered by plugins. (#1943)- If a table has a single unique text column Datasette now detects that as the foreign key label for that table. (#2458)
- The
/-/permissions
page now includes options for filtering or exclude permission checks recorded against the current user. (#2460) - Fixed a bug where replacing a database with a new one with the same name did not pick up the new database correctly. (#2465)
31st January 2025
llm 0.21 - A CLI utility and Python library for interacting with Large Language Models, including OpenAI, PaLM and local models installed on your own machine.
- New model:
o3-mini
. #728 - The
o3-mini
ando1
models now support areasoning_effort
option which can be set tolow
,medium
orhigh
. llm prompt
andllm logs
now have a--xl/--extract-last
option for extracting the last fenced code block in the response - a complement to the existing--x/--extract
option. #717
23rd January 2025
llm 0.20
- New model,
o1
. This model does not yet support streaming. #676 o1-preview
ando1-mini
models now support streaming.- New models,
gpt-4o-audio-preview
andgpt-4o-mini-audio-preview
. #677 llm prompt -x/--extract
option, which returns just the content of the first fenced code block in the response. Tryllm prompt -x 'Python function to reverse a string'
. #681- Creating a template using
llm ... --save x
now supports the-x/--extract
option, which is saved to the template. YAML templates can set this option usingextract: true
. - New
llm logs -x/--extract
option extracts the first fenced code block from matching logged responses. - New
llm models -q 'search'
option returning models that case-insensitively match the search query. #700 - Installation documentation now also includes
uv
. Thanks, Ariel Marcus. #690 and #702 llm models
command now shows the current default model at the bottom of the listing. Thanks, Amjith Ramanujam. #688- Plugin directory now includes
llm-venice
,llm-bedrock
,llm-deepseek
andllm-cmd-comp
. - Fixed bug where some dependency version combinations could cause a
Client.__init__() got an unexpected keyword argument 'proxies'
error. #709 - OpenAI embedding models are now available using their full names of
text-embedding-ada-002
,text-embedding-3-small
andtext-embedding-3-large
- the previous names are still supported as aliases. Thanks, web-sst. #654
15th January 2025
datasette-enrichments 0.5 - Tools for running enrichments against data stored in Datasette
- UI for viewing status of enrichment jobs. #51
- Pause, resume and cancel buttons. #17
- Visible progress bar on table with running enrichments. #52
- Table and database action menu items for viewing enrichment runs. #53
- Enrichments continue running after a server restart. #54
- An
enrichment
permission is now correctly registered with Datasette 1.0a+. #55 - Enrichments can pause or cancel themselves by raising the new
self.Pause(reason)
andself.Cancel(reason)
exceptions. #56
datasette-enrichments 0.5a1
14th January 2025
datasette-enrichments 0.5a0
datasette-write-ui 0.0.1a12
5th December 2024
llm 0.19.1 - A CLI utility and Python library for interacting with Large Language Models, including OpenAI, PaLM and local models installed on your own machine.
- FIxed bug where
llm.get_models()
andllm.get_async_models()
returned the same model multiple times. #667
1st December 2024
llm 0.19
- Tokens used by a response are now logged to new
input_tokens
andoutput_tokens
integer columns and atoken_details
JSON string column, for the default OpenAI models and models from other plugins that implement this feature. #610 llm prompt
now takes a-u/--usage
flag to display token usage at the end of the response.llm logs -u/--usage
shows token usage information for logged responses.llm prompt ... --async
responses are now logged to the database. #641llm.get_models()
andllm.get_async_models()
functions, documented here. #640response.usage()
and async responseawait response.usage()
methods, returning aUsage(input=2, output=1, details=None)
dataclass. #644response.on_done(callback)
andawait response.on_done(callback)
methods for specifying a callback to be executed when a response has completed, documented here. #653- Fix for bug running
llm chat
on Windows 11. Thanks, Sukhbinder Singh. #495
29th November 2024
datasette 0.65.1 - An open source multi-tool for exploring and publishing data
- Fixed bug with upgraded HTTPX 0.28.0 dependency. #2443
23rd November 2024
sqlite-utils 3.38 - CLI tool and Python library for manipulating SQLite databases
- Plugins can now reuse the implementation of the
sqlite-utils memory
CLI command with the newreturn_db=True
parameter. (#643) table.transform()
now recreates indexes after transforming a table. A newsqlite_utils.db.TransformError
exception is raised if these indexes cannot be recreated due to conflicting changes to the table such as a column rename. Thanks, Mat Miller. (#633)table.search()
now accepts ainclude_rank=True
parameter, causing the resulting rows to have arank
column showing the calculated relevance score. Thanks, liunux4odoo. (#628)- Fixed an error that occurred when creating a strict table with at least one floating point column. These
FLOAT
columns are now correctly created asREAL
as well, but only for strict tables. (#644)