How to Sort a Dictionary By Value?

Use the sorted() function with a dict.items()

Here’s how to do it without converting to a list of dictionaries:

Sort by values (ascending):

sorted_items = sorted(my_dict.items(), key=lambda item: item[1])

Sort by values (descending):

sorted_items = sorted(my_dict.items(), key=lambda item: item[1],reverse=True) 

This returns a list of (key, value) tuples sorted by value.

Example:

my_dict = {
   'apple': 10,
   'banana': 2,
   'cherry': 7
}

# Ascending sort by value
sorted_items = sorted(my_dict.items(), key=lambda x: x[1])
print(sorted_items)
# Output: [('banana', 2), ('cherry', 7), ('apple', 10)]

# Descending sort by value
sorted_items = sorted(my_dict.items(), key=lambda x: x[1], reverse=True)
print(sorted_items)
# Output: [('apple', 10), ('cherry', 7), ('banana', 2)]

Optional: Convert back to a dictionary

If you want the result back as a dict (e.g., for further use):

sorted_dict = dict(sorted(my_dict.items(), key=lambda x: x[1]))

Note: Regular Python dicts preserve insertion order as of Python 3.7+ (officially guaranteed in 3.8+), so this will maintain the sorted order.

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