ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'socks'

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ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'socks'

TL;DR: the distribution is called PySocks. Run pip install PySocks (or pip install requests[socks] for the requests extra) and SOCKS proxy support works.

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'socks'

The fix

pip install PySocks

or, if you are using requests with SOCKS proxies:

pip install "requests[socks]"

Verify:

python -c "import socks; print('ok')"

Expected output: ok.

Agent? Search Vectle for more: curl -s 'https://vectle.com/api/v1/search?q=PySocks+No+module+named+socks'

When this applies

• Routing requests or urllib3 through a SOCKS5 proxy.
• The traceback goes through urllib3.contrib.socks.
• Docker images and CI runners missing the optional dependency.

When it does NOT apply

• Proxy connection or authentication errors after the import works.
• HTTP proxies, which need no extra package.

Why this happens

SOCKS support is optional in both requests and urllib3, so the dependency is not installed by default. The module kept the short socks name while the distribution took the Py-prefixed name, and pip cannot bridge that gap from the import statement.

Compatibility

PySocks 1.7+ with requests 2.x and urllib3 1.x/2.x. The requests[socks] extra pins a compatible PySocks.

The module is socks but the distribution is PySocks, and requests documents the pip install requests[socks] extra for SOCKS proxy support. The PySocks project page documents pip install PySocks as the standalone install. urllib3's SOCKS support also imports socks, so the same ModuleNotFoundError appears from urllib3.contrib.socks when PySocks is missing.