How do I search for an available Python package using pip?

As of Dec 2020, pip search will not work (more).

The current feasible solution is to search online, on: https://pypi.org/ (reference also provided by previous comments).

If anyone hitting the following error:

xmlrpc.client.Fault: <Fault -32500: "RuntimeError: PyPI's XMLRPC API has been temporarily
disabled due to unmanageable load and will be deprecated in the near future.
See https://status.python.org/ for more information.">

as stated in #5216:

As an update: XMLRPC search does still remain disabled.

because:

As noted in #5216 (comment), a group of servers are hitting the pip search entry point, to an extent that PyPI cannot sustain that load with the current architecture of how pip search works.

Update: As a CLI alternative to pip, that uses PyPI registry, one can use poetry:

$ poetry search <package>

To search for a package, issue the command

pip search [package-name]

As of December the 14th, 2020, the pip search functionality has been disabled :

$ pip search cast
ERROR: XMLRPC request failed [code: -32500]
RuntimeError: PyPI's XMLRPC API is currently disabled due to unmanageable load and will be deprecated in the near future. See https://status.python.org/ for more information.

Here's a little tool called pip_search I've just found that does a simple search but it does the job :

This is pip_search v0.0.6 output :

$ pip_search pulsemixer
----------------  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name              Description

pulsemixer        pulsemixer - CLI and curses mixer for PulseAudio
pulsectl-asyncio  Asyncio frontend for the pulsectl Python bindings of libpulse
pulsectl          Python high-level interface and ctypes-based bindings for PulseAudio (libpulse)
----------------  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE : pip_search has been updated, each folder is a clickable (CTRL+click) URL for each project, now it looks like this :

$ pip_search pulsemixer
                                           🐍 https://pypi.org/search/?q=pulsemixer 🐍                                            
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Package             ┃ Version ┃ Released     ┃ Description                                                                     ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ 📂 pulsemixer       │ 1.5.1   │ Apr 11, 2020 │ pulsemixer - CLI and curses mixer for PulseAudio                                │
│ 📂 pulsectl-asyncio │ 0.1.7   │ Jun 13, 2021 │ Asyncio frontend for the pulsectl Python bindings of libpulse                   │
│ 📂 pulsectl         │ 21.5.18 │ May 22, 2021 │ Python high-level interface and ctypes-based bindings for PulseAudio (libpulse) │
└─────────────────────┴─────────┴──────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

To install it, just type : pip install pip_search

There's also another tool that I've just tried called pypisearch.

To install it, just type : pip install pypisearch

and it works like this :

$ python -m pypisearch pulsemixer
pulsemixer (1.5.1)        [installed 1.5.0] pulsemixer - CLI and curses mixer for PulseAudio
pulsectl-asyncio (0.1.5)  Asyncio frontend for the pulsectl Python bindings of libpulse
pulsectl (21.3.4)         Python high-level interface and ctypes-based bindings for PulseAudio (libpulse)

1. To search use pip search QUERY

   Use pip help and pip help COMMAND to learn about all available commands and their options.

2. You can find a complete list of packages here:

   https://pypi.org/

   An index with simpler markup for easier automatic consumption can be found here:

   https://pypi.org/simple/