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Slow import times #2339
Description
Confirm this is an issue with the Python library and not an underlying OpenAI API
- This is an issue with the Python library
Describe the bug
On average, it takes nearly 0.5 seconds to just import openai.
That may sound normal, but consider the case where a bunch of deps are imported and each one of them takes 0.5 seconds to be imported. Startup times of such an application go crazy.
To Reproduce
import time
start = time.time()
import openai
print(time.time() - start)Alternatively, run:
python -X importtime -c "import openai"Code snippets
OS
macOS
Python version
3.11.9
Library version
1.75.0
Reacted by wes-machine
Activity
RobertCraigie commentedon May 6, 2025
@serozhenka can you try the latest changes in #2340?
serozhenka commentedon May 6, 2025
@RobertCraigie
Yeah, much better, down to .25s on average. Appreciate the work on the lazy imports.
I think it can still be further improved by not trying to import from all of the modules in root
__init__.py, but this would affect too many people to even be discussed, I guess.RobertCraigie commentedon Jun 9, 2025
Yeah I think we're at the limit for what we can improve right now without sweeping breaking changes unfortunately.
jmathes commentedon Jan 12, 2026
Created a similar bug, likely with a different cause but similar symptoms: 2819