Installation

Before you can use Meltano, you’ll need to get it installed. We have a complete installation guide that covers all the possibilities, virtual environments and using pipx; this guide will guide you to a fast installation that will work for the tutorial.

Install Meltano

Use the following command to check that you have a supported Python version installed:

python --version

Meltano supports all versions of Python that have not yet reached their end-of-life date. Refer to the official Python documentation for when versions of Python will reach end-of-life.

Not all plugins support the latest versions of Python.

Using uv

uv is a Python package and project manager, written in Rust. It makes it easy to install a Python-based tool like Meltano in an isolated virtual environment.

$ uv tool install meltano
---> 100%
Installed 1 executable: meltano

Using pipx

Since Meltano is an application, it should always be installed into a clean virtual environment without any other packages installed alongside it.

To simplify installing Meltano into a clean virtual environment, pipx can be used to install Meltano instead of pip. pip is a package installer that comes automatically with Python. pipx is a wrapper around pip which cleanly installs executable Python applications (such as Meltano) into their own virtual environments.

$ pipx install "meltano"
---> 100%
successfully installed meltano

Using Docker

We maintain the meltano/meltano Docker image on Docker Hub, which comes with Python and Meltano pre-installed.

Image Variants:

• Slim images (recommended): Add -slim suffix, e.g. latest-slim - optimized size, includes cloud storage and PostgreSQL support
• Full images: Default tags like latest - includes all database connectors and build tools

To get the latest version of Meltano, pull the latest tag. Images for specific versions of Meltano are tagged v<major>.<minor>.<patch>, e.g. v3.8.0 or v3.8.0-slim. Add a -python3.X suffix to the image tag to change the python version, e.g. latest-python3.13-slim. To get the latest minor or patch version, omit that value from the version number, e.g. v3-slim for the latest Meltano v3.*.* slim image.

$ docker pull meltano/meltano:latest-slim
latest-slim: Pulling from meltano/meltano
---> 100%
Status: Downloaded newer image for meltano/meltano:latest-slim
docker.io/meltano/meltano:latest-slim

$ docker run meltano/meltano:latest-slim --version
meltano, version 3.9.1

Using pip

Meltano provides a Python package that can be installed using pip.

To avoid dependency conflicts, please ensure Meltano is installed into a clean Python virtual environment.

You can use the --require-virtualenv command line flag or the PIP_REQUIRE_VIRTUALENV=1 environment variable to ensure that Meltano is installed into a virtual environment.

In ephemeral CI or container-based deployments where Meltano is the main application, installing it globally may actually be preferred.

$ pip install --upgrade pip
Requirement already satisfied.
$ pip install "meltano"
---> 100%
successfully installed meltano

To upgrade to the latest version, use uv tool upgrade meltano, pipx upgrade meltano, pip install --upgrade meltano, or pull the latest Docker image.

More Information

To understand details of the installation, like mounting a docker volume to work long-term with the docker image, view the detailed installation guide.

Next Steps

Once you're set up, head over to the tutorial to learn how to initialize your first project and start to import data.