Evaluated Python-first open source projects for developers making their first contribution.
A guide to open source projects that are actually worth contributing to as a beginner. Not a list of projects with a "good first issue" label slapped on them. An evaluation of whether those projects are genuinely welcoming, actively maintained, and likely to give you real feedback on a real PR.
Every project in here was researched across four things:
- Contribution guidelines: how hard is the setup, what does the PR process look like, do you need to open an issue first, what tooling is required
- Review culture: who reviews, how long it takes, what the feedback actually looks like, where the bottlenecks are
- Beginner issues: whether the labeled issues are current, well-scoped, and representative of the kind of work a newcomer can realistically do
- Project health: recent releases, commit activity, community channels, governance risks
Developers who want to start contributing to open source but don't want to spend hours researching a project only to find out the maintainer hasn't reviewed a PR in six months.
The current guide covers Python projects from the awesome-for-beginners list, researched and evaluated in July 2026.
Issue counts, star counts, and label queues go stale fast. Before committing to any project, spend five minutes checking:
- Has it shipped a release in the last 3–6 months?
- Are there commits in the last 30 days?
- Is the beginner-issue queue actually populated right now?
- Is there a Discord, Slack, or Matrix you can join if you get stuck?
Last updated: July 2026