How to upgrade all Python packages with pip

There isn’t a built-in flag yet, but you can use:

pip list --outdated --format=freeze | grep -v '^\-e' | cut -d = -f 1  | xargs -n1 pip install -U

For older versions of pip:

pip freeze --local | grep -v '^\-e' | cut -d = -f 1  | xargs -n1 pip install -U

• The grep is to skip editable (“-e”) package definitions, as suggested by @jawache. (Yes, you could replace grep+cut with sed or awk or perl or…).

• The -n1 flag for xargs prevents stopping everything if updating one package fails (thanks @andsens).

Note: there are infinite potential variations for this. I’m trying to keep this answer short and simple, but please do suggest variations in the comments!