Unified interface to Quadratic Programming (QP) solvers available in Python.

qpsolvers v3 is coming out on February 28, 2023.

To install both the library and a starter set of open-source QP solvers:

pip install "qpsolvers[open_source_solvers]"

To install just the library:

pip install qpsolvers

conda install qpsolvers -c conda-forge

Check out the documentation for Python 2 or Windows instructions.

The library provides a one-stop shop solve_qp function with a solver keyword argument to select the backend solver. It solves convex quadratic programs in standard form:

$$ \begin{split} \begin{array}{ll} \underset{x}{\mbox{minimize}} & \frac{1}{2} x^T P x + q^T x \\ \mbox{subject to} & G x \leq h \\ & A x = b \\ & lb \leq x \leq ub \end{array} \end{split} $$

Vector inequalities apply coordinate by coordinate. The function returns the solution $x^*$ found by the solver, or None in case of failure/unfeasible problem. For most solvers, the matrix $P$ should be positive definite.

📢 New with v2.7: get dual multipliers at the solution using the solve_problem function.

To solve a quadratic program, build the matrices that define it and call the solve_qp function:

import numpy as np
from qpsolvers import solve_qp

M = np.array([[1.0, 2.0, 0.0], [-8.0, 3.0, 2.0], [0.0, 1.0, 1.0]])
P = M.T @ M  # this is a positive definite matrix
q = np.array([3.0, 2.0, 3.0]) @ M
G = np.array([[1.0, 2.0, 1.0], [2.0, 0.0, 1.0], [-1.0, 2.0, -1.0]])
h = np.array([3.0, 2.0, -2.0])
A = np.array([1.0, 1.0, 1.0])
b = np.array([1.0])

x = solve_qp(P, q, G, h, A, b, solver="proxqp")
print(f"QP solution: x = {x}")

This example outputs the solution [0.30769231, -0.69230769, 1.38461538]. It is also possible to get dual multipliers at the solution, as shown in this example.

Matrix arguments are NumPy arrays for dense solvers and SciPy Compressed Sparse Column (CSC) matrices for sparse ones.

• Can I print the list of solvers available on my machine?
  • Absolutely: print(qpsolvers.available_solvers)
• Is it possible to solve a least squares rather than a quadratic program?
  • Yes, there is also a solve_ls function.
• I have a squared norm in my cost function, how can I apply a QP solver to my problem?
  • You can cast squared norms to QP matrices and feed the result to solve_qp.
• I have a non-convex quadratic program. Is there a solver I can use?
  • Unfortunately most available QP solvers are designed for convex problems.
  • If your cost matrix P is semi-definite rather than definite, try OSQP.
  • If your problem has concave components, go for a nonlinear solver such as IPOPT e.g. using CasADi.
• I get the following build error on Windows when running pip install qpsolvers.
  • You will need to install the Visual C++ Build Tools to build all package dependencies.
• Can I help?
  • Absolutely! The first step is to install the library and use it. Report any bug in the issue tracker.
  • If you're a developer looking to hack on open source, check out the contribution guidelines for suggestions.

On a dense problem, the performance of all solvers (as measured by IPython's %timeit on an Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00GHz) is:

On a sparse problem with n = 500 optimization variables, these performances become:

On a model predictive control problem for robot locomotion, we get:

Finally, here is a small benchmark of random dense problems (each data point corresponds to an average over 10 runs):

Note that performances of QP solvers largely depend on the problem solved. For instance, MOSEK performs an automatic conversion to Second-Order Cone Programming (SOCP) which the documentation advises bypassing for better performance. Similarly, ECOS reformulates from QP to SOCP and works best on small problems.