psutil

psutil is a widely adopted cross-platform Python library designed to retrieve detailed information about system utilization and running processes in a consistent and programmatic way. It exposes a rich API that allows developers to inspect CPU usage, memory consumption, disk activity, network statistics, and hardware sensors without relying on platform-specific tools. The library effectively replicates and unifies the capabilities of classic UNIX utilities such as ps, top, netstat, and free, making it especially valuable for monitoring, profiling, and process management workflows. Because it supports multiple operating systems including Linux, Windows, macOS, and BSD variants, psutil enables developers to build portable observability tools and automation scripts. It is commonly used in performance dashboards, resource limiters, and infrastructure monitoring agents due to its lightweight footprint and mature ecosystem.