The short answer, or TL;DR

Basically, eval is used to evaluate a single dynamically generated Python expression, and exec is used to execute dynamically generated Python code only for its side effects.

eval and exec have these two differences:

1. eval accepts only a single expression, exec can take a code block that has Python statements: loops, try: except:, class and function/method definitions and so on.

   An expression in Python is whatever you can have as the value in a variable assignment:

   Copya_variable = (anything you can put within these parentheses is an expression)
   

2. eval returns the value of the given expression, whereas exec ignores the return value from its code, and always returns None (in Python 2 it is a statement and cannot be used as an expression, so it really does not return anything).

In versions 1.0 - 2.7, exec was a statement, because CPython needed to produce a different kind of code object for functions that used exec for its side effects inside the function.

In Python 3, exec is a function; its use has no effect on the compiled bytecode of the function where it is used.

Thus basically:

Copy>>> a = 5
>>> eval('37 + a')   # it is an expression
42
>>> exec('37 + a')   # it is an expression statement; value is ignored (None is returned)
>>> exec('a = 47')   # modify a global variable as a side effect
>>> a
47
>>> eval('a = 47')  # you cannot evaluate a statement
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "<string>", line 1
    a = 47
      ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

The compile in 'exec' mode compiles any number of statements into a bytecode that implicitly always returns None, whereas in 'eval' mode it compiles a single expression into bytecode that returns the value of that expression.

Copy>>> eval(compile('42', '<string>', 'exec'))  # code returns None
>>> eval(compile('42', '<string>', 'eval'))  # code returns 42
42
>>> exec(compile('42', '<string>', 'eval'))  # code returns 42,
>>>                                          # but ignored by exec

In the 'eval' mode (and thus with the eval function if a string is passed in), the compile raises an exception if the source code contains statements or anything else beyond a single expression:

Copy>>> compile('for i in range(3): print(i)', '<string>', 'eval')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "<string>", line 1
    for i in range(3): print(i)
      ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Actually the statement "eval accepts only a single expression" applies only when a string (which contains Python source code) is passed to eval. Then it is internally compiled to bytecode using compile(source, '<string>', 'eval') This is where the difference really comes from.

If a code object (which contains Python bytecode) is passed to exec or eval, they behave identically, excepting for the fact that exec ignores the return value, still returning None always. So it is possible use eval to execute something that has statements, if you just compiled it into bytecode before instead of passing it as a string:

Copy>>> eval(compile('if 1: print("Hello")', '<string>', 'exec'))
Hello
>>>

works without problems, even though the compiled code contains statements. It still returns None, because that is the return value of the code object returned from compile.

In the 'eval' mode (and thus with the eval function if a string is passed in), the compile raises an exception if the source code contains statements or anything else beyond a single expression:

Copy>>> compile('for i in range(3): print(i)', '<string>'. 'eval')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "<string>", line 1
    for i in range(3): print(i)
      ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

The longer answer, a.k.a the gory details

exec and eval

The exec function (which was a statement in Python 2) is used for executing a dynamically created statement or program:

Copy>>> program = '''
for i in range(3):
    print("Python is cool")
'''
>>> exec(program)
Python is cool
Python is cool
Python is cool
>>> 

The eval function does the same for a single expression, and returns the value of the expression:

Copy>>> a = 2
>>> my_calculation = '42 * a'
>>> result = eval(my_calculation)
>>> result
84

exec and eval both accept the program/expression to be run either as a str, unicode or bytes object containing source code, or as a code object which contains Python bytecode.

If a str/unicode/bytes containing source code was passed to exec, it behaves equivalently to:

Copyexec(compile(source, '<string>', 'exec'))

and eval similarly behaves equivalent to:

Copyeval(compile(source, '<string>', 'eval'))

Since all expressions can be used as statements in Python (these are called the Expr nodes in the Python abstract grammar; the opposite is not true), you can always use exec if you do not need the return value. That is to say, you can use either eval('my_func(42)') or exec('my_func(42)'), the difference being that eval returns the value returned by my_func, and exec discards it:

Copy>>> def my_func(arg):
...     print("Called with %d" % arg)
...     return arg * 2
... 
>>> exec('my_func(42)')
Called with 42
>>> eval('my_func(42)')
Called with 42
84
>>> 

Of the 2, only exec accepts source code that contains statements, like def, for, while, import, or class, the assignment statement (a.k.a a = 42), or entire programs:

Copy>>> exec('for i in range(3): print(i)')
0
1
2
>>> eval('for i in range(3): print(i)')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "<string>", line 1
    for i in range(3): print(i)
      ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Both exec and eval accept 2 additional positional arguments - globals and locals - which are the global and local variable scopes that the code sees. These default to the globals() and locals() within the scope that called exec or eval, but any dictionary can be used for globals and any mapping for locals (including dict of course). These can be used not only to restrict/modify the variables that the code sees, but are often also used for capturing the variables that the executed code creates:

Copy>>> g = dict()
>>> l = dict()
>>> exec('global a; a, b = 123, 42', g, l)
>>> g['a']
123
>>> l
{'b': 42}

(If you display the value of the entire g, it would be much longer, because exec and eval add the built-ins module as __builtins__ to the globals automatically if it is missing).

In Python 2, the official syntax for the exec statement is actually exec code in globals, locals, as in

Copy>>> exec 'global a; a, b = 123, 42' in g, l

However the alternate syntax exec(code, globals, locals) has always been accepted too (see below).

compile

The compile(source, filename, mode, flags=0, dont_inherit=False, optimize=-1) built-in can be used to speed up repeated invocations of the same code with exec or eval by compiling the source into a code object beforehand. The mode parameter controls the kind of code fragment the compile function accepts and the kind of bytecode it produces. The choices are 'eval', 'exec' and 'single':

• 'eval' mode expects a single expression, and will produce bytecode that when run will return the value of that expression:

  Copy>>> dis.dis(compile('a + b', '<string>', 'eval'))
    1           0 LOAD_NAME                0 (a)
                3 LOAD_NAME                1 (b)
                6 BINARY_ADD
                7 RETURN_VALUE
  

• 'exec' accepts any kinds of python constructs from single expressions to whole modules of code, and executes them as if they were module top-level statements. The code object returns None:

  Copy>>> dis.dis(compile('a + b', '<string>', 'exec'))
    1           0 LOAD_NAME                0 (a)
                3 LOAD_NAME                1 (b)
                6 BINARY_ADD
                7 POP_TOP                             <- discard result
                8 LOAD_CONST               0 (None)   <- load None on stack
               11 RETURN_VALUE                        <- return top of stack
  

• 'single' is a limited form of 'exec' which accepts a source code containing a single statement (or multiple statements separated by ;) if the last statement is an expression statement, the resulting bytecode also prints the repr of the value of that expression to the standard output(!).

  An if-elif-else chain, a loop with else, and try with its except, else and finally blocks is considered a single statement.

  A source fragment containing 2 top-level statements is an error for the 'single', except in Python 2 there is a bug that sometimes allows multiple toplevel statements in the code; only the first is compiled; the rest are ignored:

  In Python 2.7.8:

  Copy>>> exec(compile('a = 5\na = 6', '<string>', 'single'))
  >>> a
  5
  

  And in Python 3.4.2: