10 Ways to Speed Up Your Python Code

1. List Comprehensions
numbers = [x**2 for x in range(100000) if x % 2 == 0]
instead of
numbers = []
for x in range(100000):
    if x % 2 == 0:
        numbers.append(x**2)

2. Use the Built-In Functions
Many of Python’s built-in functions are written in C, which makes them much faster than a pure python solution.

3. Function Calls Are Expensive
Function calls are expensive in Python. While it is often good practice to separate code into functions, there are times where you should be cautious about calling functions from inside of a loop. It is better to iterate inside a function than to iterate and call a function each iteration.

4. Lazy Module Importing
If you want to use the time.sleep() function in your code, you don't necessarily need to import the entire time package. Instead, you can just do from time import sleep and avoid the overhead of loading basically everything.

5. Take Advantage of Numpy
Numpy is a highly optimized library built with C. It is almost always faster to offload complex math to Numpy rather than relying on the Python interpreter.

6. Try Multiprocessing
Multiprocessing can bring large performance increases to a Python script, but it can be difficult to implement properly compared to other methods mentioned in this post.

7. Be Careful with Bulky Libraries
One of the advantages Python has over other programming languages is the rich selection of third-party libraries available to developers. But, what we may not always consider is the size of the library we are using as a dependency, which could actually decrease the performance of your Python code.

8. Avoid Global Variables
Python is slightly faster at retrieving local variables than global ones. It is simply best to avoid global variables when possible.

9. Try Multiple Solutions
Being able to solve a problem in multiple ways is nice. But, there is often a solution that is faster than the rest and sometimes it comes down to just using a different method or data structure.

10. Think About Your Data Structures
Searching a dictionary or set is insanely fast, but lists take time proportional to the length of the list. However, sets and dictionaries do not maintain order. If you care about the order of your data, you can’t make use of dictionaries or sets.