# jamesturk/jellyfish

🪼 a python library for doing approximate and phonetic matching of strings.

Repository: https://github.com/jamesturk/jellyfish
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/jamesturk-jellyfish
Homepage: https://jpt.sh/projects/jellyfish/
Language: Jupyter Notebook
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: python, levenshtein, soundex, hamming, metaphone, jaro-winkler, fuzzy-search, hacktoberfest
Last push: 2026-07-24T01:48:03+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 75/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 94, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 5899, "days_push": 41, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2229, forks 169 (observed 2026-08-28T04:06:28.962740+00:00)

## What it is
Jellyfish is a Python library for approximate and phonetic string matching, offering algorithms like Levenshtein, Jaro-Winkler, Hamming, and phonetic encoders such as Soundex, Metaphone, and NYSIIS. Core algorithms are implemented in Rust for speed, with Python fallback implementations.

## Use cases
- fuzzy match strings in python
- compute levenshtein distance between two strings
- phonetic encoding of names for deduplication
- fuzzy search over a list of names
- compare misspelled words for spell checking
- record linkage and entity matching on names

## When to choose
- you need string similarity or phonetic encoding in Python with fast native performance
- you want a mature, MIT-licensed library with many standard algorithms in one package

## When to avoid
- you need full-text or vector search rather than pairwise string comparison
- you need fuzzy matching in a non-Python language

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: stable
- function: nlp, search-engine, parser
- domain: data-science
- platform: python, cross-platform
- tags: fuzzy-matching, string-similarity, phonetic-encoding, levenshtein, soundex, jaro-winkler, metaphone, rust-accelerated, record-linkage, natural-language-processing, algorithms

## Member repositories
- jamesturk/jellyfish (main) score 75

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:28.962740+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T02:44:40.682518+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/jamesturk/jellyfish (fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:28.962740+00:00, sha 039e81b8f766)
  - homepage: https://jpt.sh/projects/jellyfish/ (fetched 2026-08-29T10:25:28.626584+00:00, sha 422401a1c103)
  - site_page: https://www.jpt.sh/projects/jellyfish/changelog (fetched 2026-08-29T10:25:28.635671+00:00, sha c752bf779a6b)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.