memory size of Python data structure

Question

How do I find out the memory size of a Python data structure? I'm looking for something like:

sizeof({1:'hello', 2:'world'})

It is great if it counts every thing recursively. But even a basic non-recursive result helps. Basically I want to get a sense of various implementation options like tuple v.s. list v.s. class in terms of memory footprint. It matters because I'm planning to have millions of object instantiated.

My current dev platform is CPython 2.6.

That's going to be a really slow program, unless you have a lot of memory. Plus the size of the lookup table is going to be pretty huge (millions of objects?). Just sayin' — Wayne Werner
– Wayne Werner, Commented Aug 12, 2010 at 20:06
namedtuple is a good alternative to using classes as the space required by each instance is the same as a tuple. If you have a lot of instances of one class, you should look into __slots__ — John La Rooy
– John La Rooy, Commented Aug 12, 2010 at 20:51

David Z · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-28 02:11:10Z

29

Have a look at the sys.getsizeof function. According to the documentation, it returns the size of an object in bytes, as given by the object's __sizeof__ method.

As Daniel pointed out in a comment, it's not recursive; it only counts bytes occupied by the object itself, not other objects it refers to. This recipe for a recursive computation is linked to by the Python 3 documentation.

edited Jul 28, 2015 at 2:11

answered Aug 12, 2010 at 20:05

David Z

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1 Comment

kevinarpe Over a year ago

This version works well for Python 2: gist.github.com/durden/0b93cfe4027761e17e69c48f9d5c4118

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