# MDAnalysis documentation

Release:

  2.10.0

Date:

  Jun 09, 2026

MDAnalysis (www.mdanalysis.org) is an object-oriented python toolkit to analyze molecular dynamics trajectories generated by CHARMM, Gromacs, Amber, NAMD, LAMMPS, DL_POLY and other packages; it also reads other formats (e.g., PDB files and XYZ format trajectories; see Table of supported coordinate formats and Table of Supported Topology Formats for the full lists). It can write most of these formats, too, together with atom selections for use in Gromacs, CHARMM, VMD and PyMol (see Selection exporters).

It allows one to read molecular dynamics trajectories and access the atomic coordinates through NumPy arrays. This provides a flexible and relatively fast framework for complex analysis tasks. Fairly complete atom Selection commands are implemented. Trajectories can also be manipulated (for instance, fit to a reference structure) and written out in a range of formats.

## Getting involved

Please report bugs or enhancement requests through the Issue Tracker. Questions can also be asked on the GitHub Discussions.

The MDAnalysis community follows a Code of Conduct that all members are expected to adhere to. Please take a moment to read it.

## Installing and using MDAnalysis

The MDAnalysis User Guide provides comprehensive information on how to install and use the library. We would recommend that new users have a look at the Quick Start Guide. The User Guide also has a set of examples on how to use the MDAnalysis library which may be of interest.

## Source code

The MDAnalysis source code is available on https://github.com/MDAnalysis/mdanalysis/ and is distributed under the Lesser GNU Public Licence, version 3 or any later version. Individual components of the source code are provided under LGPL compatible licenses, details can be found in the MDAnalysis license file. Obtain the sources with git.

    git clone https://github.com/MDAnalysis/mdanalysis.git

The User Guide provides more information on how to install from source.

## Citation

When using MDAnalysis in published work, please cite [Michaud-Agrawal2011] and [Gowers2016].

MDAnalysis includes specific algorithms and analysis modules, some of which have been published in the scientific literature. Please ensure you cite the relevant Citations for included algorithms and modules when using these features in your research.

Thank you!

## Indices and tables

- Index

- Module Index

- Search Page