Lettuce

Spec sheet

Purpose

Lettuce runs plain-text functional descriptions as automated tests for Python projects using behavior-driven development.Read 8 Oct 2026 · lettuce.readthedocs.io

Audience

The tutorial says Lettuce lets people who do not program describe the behavior of a system in plain text.Read 8 Oct 2026 · lettuce.readthedocs.io

Support

The project documentation directs users to an issue tracker and user and development mailing lists.Read 8 Oct 2026 · lettuce.readthedocs.io

License

The repository identifies Lettuce as free software under the GNU General Public License version 3 or later.Read 8 Oct 2026 · github.com

Founded

2010Read 28 Sep 2026 · lettuce.readthedocs.io

CI output

Lettuce can use Subunit to output test results for continuous-integration workflows.Read 8 Oct 2026 · lettuce.readthedocs.io

Command-line use

Lettuce runs from a shell and can run feature files or selected scenarios.Read 8 Oct 2026 · lettuce.readthedocs.io

Cucumber inspiration

The documentation describes Lettuce as a BDD tool based on Cucumber, which has more features than Lettuce.Read 8 Oct 2026 · lettuce.readthedocs.io

Django

The project README lists Django among the packages used in Lettuce's tests.Read 8 Oct 2026 · github.com

Django integration

Lettuce supports Django projects and documents Django-specific hooks and built-in steps.Read 8 Oct 2026 · lettuce.readthedocs.io

Grouped steps

Lettuce supports grouping steps in a class decorated with @steps.Read 8 Oct 2026 · lettuce.readthedocs.io

Installation

The documentation says the latest stable release can be installed with pip.Read 8 Oct 2026 · lettuce.readthedocs.io

Known comparison

The documentation says Lettuce focuses on common BDD tasks and has fewer features than Cucumber.Read 8 Oct 2026 · lettuce.readthedocs.io

Natural-language scenarios

Developers can describe features in natural language as scenarios and define Python steps that execute them.Read 8 Oct 2026 · lettuce.readthedocs.io

Scenario writing

Features can be described in natural language as one or more scenarios, with steps that run Python code.Read 8 Oct 2026 · lettuce.readthedocs.io

Step discovery

Lettuce recursively looks for Python files inside the features directory; the files can have any name ending in .py.Read 8 Oct 2026 · lettuce.readthedocs.io

Step syntax

Steps can be defined with the @step decorator, using a sentence pattern or taking the sentence from a function name or docstring.Read 8 Oct 2026 · lettuce.readthedocs.io

Test setup hooks

Hooks can run before and after features, scenarios, and steps for tasks such as setting up or cleaning test data.Read 8 Oct 2026 · lettuce.readthedocs.io

Unstable features

The documentation warns that step.behave_as and xUnit XML output are unstable and untested.Read 8 Oct 2026 · lettuce.readthedocs.io

Windows support

The project README notes that a contributor made Lettuce work on Windows and points to an installation guide.Read 8 Oct 2026 · github.com

Where Specifiction places it

• BDD Testing Tools#26 of 307.0