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You’re writing a Python app. It works. Now you need a button. Maybe a checkbox. Maybe a full window with fields and sliders.
Welcome to the part where everything feels like it was designed by five people in 1998 who never spoke to each other.
The good news? There are real options now. Some are easy. Some look great. Some are both. This isn’t a hype list. No rankings. Just what works, what doesn’t, and what you should probably avoid if you value your time.
Scroll no further if you just want the answers. This chart breaks it all down.
Need |
Use This |
|---|---|
| Easiest start, quick results | PySimpleGUI |
| Classic intro to GUI concepts | Tkinter |
| Full control, modern design | PyQt or PySide |
| Touch gestures, mobile focus | Kivy |
| Touch gestures, mobile focus | wxPython |
| Data dashboards | Streamlit |
| Visual performance & effects | Libavg |
| Multi-platform (desktop + web) | PyForms |
| Lightweight | PyGUI |
Tkinter is always the first GUI people touch in Python. It’s included by default. You write a few lines, hit run, and a window pops up. For beginners, that’s gold. You don’t have to install anything. You don’t have to understand event loops. You just write code and stuff appears.
The problem starts when you care about how that stuff looks. Tkinter interfaces are stiff. The widgets feel old. You’re stuck with weird padding rules, and trying to center things properly will drain your soul. If you want hover effects, animations, or even just clean dropdowns, it’ll fight you the whole way.
You can make it work. There are themes and tweaks, but even the best-looking Tkinter app still feels off. It’s good if you need a quick UI on top of a script. Beyond that, it gets frustrating fast.
Still, for learning how UIs work, it’s a decent starting point. You’ll outgrow it. Most people do.
This one gives you real power. PyQt is built on Qt, which is what a lot of professional desktop software uses. You get tabs, menus, custom dialogs, drag-and-drop, media players, even OpenGL widgets. It can do everything.
And everything is customizable. You want a button that looks like it was designed by Apple? You can do it. You want to theme every inch of your interface with CSS-like styling? You can do that too. It feels like building a real desktop app, not a side project.
But it’s not simple. You deal with signals and slots, class inheritance, object trees, and a whole structure that expects you to think like a C++ dev. There’s less freedom to wing it. You either follow the flow or it breaks.
The tutorials don’t help much either. Most are shallow or outdated. To really learn PyQt, you’ll probably end up buying a book or reading the Qt C++ docs and mentally translating it to Python.
If you’ve already done some coding and want something pro-level, this is it. Just be ready to put in time.
PySide is Qt for Python, just with a license that won’t make you nervous. PyQt is GPL or commercial, which can get weird depending on how you ship your app. PySide is LGPL, which is more relaxed. That’s really the big reason to pick it over PyQt.
Under the hood, they’re almost the same. The syntax is nearly identical. The tools are the same. But support and community are smaller. If you hit an error, there’s a better chance the solution you find online will be for PyQt, not PySide.
Still, if you’re building something for public release or commercial use, it’s the safer long-term option. You don’t want to rebuild later because of a licensing issue.
Kivy feels like it was built by people who got tired of clunky old GUI frameworks and decided to start over. And in some ways, that’s exactly what they did. It doesn’t try to mimic your operating system. It builds its own style. That means it runs the same across platforms, but also looks the same, for better or worse.
It’s made for apps that need to feel modern. Think sliders, touch gestures, swipeable cards. It works on desktop, but it really shines on mobile. You can build one interface and run it on Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, even Raspberry Pi.
Performance-wise, it’s strong. It runs on OpenGL ES 2, so it can handle animations and graphics pretty smoothly. If you’re building a dashboard, a touch-based app, or something visual, Kivy makes sense.
But it’s different. The layout system takes a minute to learn. Things like spacing, sizing, and widget hierarchy work differently than Tkinter or PyQt. The docs are okay, but not deep. You’ll be trial-and-erroring your way through a lot at first.
If you want something that feels new, handles gestures, or works across multiple platforms out of the box, this is one of the best choices. Just don’t expect it to feel like other Python tools.
PySimpleGUI is kind of the opposite of Kivy. It’s not fancy. It’s not flashy. But it makes getting a working interface stupidly easy.
It wraps around other GUI libraries like Tkinter, Qt, or Wx, and gives you a simplified API. You write five lines, and you’ve got a working app window with inputs, buttons, maybe even a file browser. It’s perfect for scripts you’re turning into tools or quick internal apps that just need a face.
You won’t get a modern look. You won’t get animation, transitions, or custom widgets. But that’s not the point. It’s about speed. You trade flexibility for simplicity.
It’s also great for people who don’t care about GUIs but need to ship something usable. You write less, maintain less, and focus on logic instead of layout.
If you’re new or just want something that works without the headache, this is the lowest-friction option out there.
wxPython is an underdog on this list. It doesn’t show up in a lot of “top GUI” lists, but it’s been around for a long time and it’s solid.
The whole point of wxPython is to give you a native look. Your app uses the actual system UI elements such as buttons, menus, scrollbars, so it ends up looking like part of the OS. On Windows, it looks like a Windows app. On macOS, it feels like a Mac app.
That’s great if your users expect a certain experience. It also means less styling work for you, since the OS handles that. But it also means you don’t have full control over how things look. You’re playing by platform rules.
The API is a bit old-school. Not as clean or modern as PyQt. You won’t find as many active tutorials or flashy GitHub projects. But if you need something stable that blends in with the system, wxPython is worth considering.
Streamlit isn’t your typical GUI toolkit. You don’t use it to build full apps with menus, tabs, and forms. What it does is turn Python scripts into interactive dashboards. Fast.
You write normal Python, toss in a st.button() or a st.slider(), and now your script takes input from users. It’s that simple. It was built for data apps with charts, tables, filters, models and stuff you’d normally run in a Jupyter notebook. Streamlit lets you turn that into a web app in minutes.
You won’t build a desktop app with this. But if you’ve got a model, a report, or something that needs to be interactive and shareable, this is the easiest way to do it. You’ll see it a lot in data science workflows, and for good reason.
Libavg is kind of niche. It’s a multimedia framework that leans into visuals and performance. If you’re working on something that needs GPU acceleration with animations, camera feeds, slick transitions, then this is built for that.
It’s written in C++ with Python bindings, which means it’s fast. It also supports things like blur effects, real-time video, and gesture input. This isn’t for building a regular UI. It’s more for art installations, touchscreen displays, and stuff you might see in museums or kiosks.
The learning curve is there. The community is small. But if you’re doing visual-heavy work, Libavg offers tools most other GUI frameworks don’t touch.
PyForms takes a different angle. It lets you build interfaces that work across desktop, web, and terminal. Same app, different modes.
It doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel. It focuses on keeping your code clean and portable. You write once, then choose where you want it to run. That’s useful if your tool needs to work in multiple environments or for different types of users.
It’s not as beginner-focused as PySimpleGUI. You’ll still deal with class-based structures and some level of abstraction. But the promise is fewer rewrites when you shift platforms.
For admin panels, data viewers, or internal tools, PyForms can save a lot of time, especially if you want a GUI today and a web version tomorrow.
Conclusion
Picking a GUI library isn’t about finding the “best.” It’s about choosing what makes sense for what you’re building.
If you’re just getting started, use something simple. Don’t overthink it. Tkinter and PySimpleGUI will help you understand how interfaces work. Once you’ve got that down, you can move to something more powerful.
If you’re building something for real users, especially if design matters, invest the time in PyQt, Kivy, or PySide2. These tools can make your app feel like an app, not a school project.
Each of these has its place. Know what you need, pick one, and start building.