Email Reply Parser

0.5.12 · maintenance · verified Sun Apr 12

Email Reply Parser is a Python library that simplifies the process of extracting the most recent reply from plain text email conversations. It is a port of GitHub's original Ruby email_reply_parser. The library helps in automatically stripping out quoted previous messages, signatures, and disclaimers, providing a cleaner, actionable response. The current version, 0.5.12, was released in October 2020, indicating a slow release cadence.

Warnings

gotcha The parser primarily relies on English-specific heuristics (e.g., 'On <date>, <author> wrote:') for identifying quoted replies. It may not work correctly or be less effective with emails in other languages or with different reply header formats.
Fix: For multi-language support, consider using a more actively maintained library or a service designed for international email parsing.
gotcha This library is strictly designed for plain text emails. It does not process HTML email content, and feeding it HTML input may lead to incorrect or incomplete parsing results.
Fix: Ensure that the email content is converted to plain text before passing it to the parser. If HTML parsing is required, a different library capable of handling HTML email structures is needed.
gotcha Signature detection is heuristic-based (e.g., looking for lines starting with `--` or `__`). Its accuracy can vary significantly depending on the email client, custom signature formats, and general email content.
Fix: Review parsed output for emails with unusual signature formats and consider custom pre-processing or post-processing if precise signature stripping is critical.
gotcha Quoted headers (like 'On <date>, <author> wrote:') that span multiple lines due to email client formatting (e.g., Gmail's line-wrapping) may not be correctly identified and stripped, leading to quoted content appearing in the reply.
Fix: No direct fix within the library; manual pre-processing to normalize such headers might be necessary, but this can be complex.

Install

pip install email-reply-parser Install stable version

Imports

EmailReplyParser

from email_reply_parser import EmailReplyParser

Quickstart

This example demonstrates how to use `EmailReplyParser.read()` to get a detailed breakdown of email fragments and `EmailReplyParser.parse_reply()` to extract only the most recent, non-quoted, non-signature reply from an email body.

from email_reply_parser import EmailReplyParser

email_body = '''Hi there,

I appreciate your help with this issue.

Best regards,
John

On Mon, Apr 8, 2026 at 10:00 AM, Support <support@example.com> wrote:
> How can we help you today?
>
> Thanks,
> Support Team'''

# Get the full parsed email structure (list of fragments)
parsed_email = EmailReplyParser.read(email_body)
print("--- Full Parsed Email Fragments ---")
for fragment in parsed_email.fragments:
    print(f"Content: {fragment.content.strip()}\nIs a signature: {fragment.is_signature}\nIs quoted: {fragment.is_quoted}\nIs hidden: {fragment.is_hidden}\n---")

# Get only the reply message (stripping quotes and signatures)
reply_text = EmailReplyParser.parse_reply(email_body)
print("\n--- Extracted Reply Text ---")
print(reply_text)

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