This script accepts a package name and version and prints the next package version that is newer than the one provided

next_version.py

#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""
Note: This will only work with python 3. You also need to install "packaging":

    pip install packaging
"""

from typing import Iterable, Optional, Union

import json
import urllib.request

from packaging.version import Version, InvalidVersion

from pip._internal.operations.freeze import freeze


def main():
    print('This tool is useful if you like to gradually update packages,\ninstead of upgrading to the newest available version.')
    print('You might want to run this program repeatedly after upgrading. :-)')
    print()
    print('Package'.ljust(25), 'Installed'.ljust(25), 'Next version'.ljust(25))
    print('=' * 75)

    # TODO:
    # Is the freeze-format always <pkg>==<version>
    # even when a package is installed using range syntax?
    for old in freeze():
        if '==' not in old:
            continue

        old_package, old_version = old.split('==')

        nxt_version = ''
        try:
            nxt_version = next_version(old_package, old_version)
        except InvalidVersion as exp:
            continue

        if nxt_version:
            print(old_package.ljust(25), old_version.ljust(25), str(nxt_version).ljust(25))


def versions(package_name) -> Iterable[Version]:
    url = 'https://pypi.python.org/pypi/%s/json' % (package_name,)
    request = urllib.request.Request(url)
    data = json.load(urllib.request.urlopen(request))
    versions = [str(r) for r in data["releases"]]

    return sorted([Version(v) for v in versions])


def next_version(pkg: str, version: Union[str, Version]) -> Optional[Version]:
    if isinstance(version, str):
        version = Version(version)

    for candidate in versions(pkg):
        if candidate > version:
            return candidate


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

The output looks like this:

Package                   Installed                 Next version
===========================================================================
asgiref                   2.0.1                     2.1.0
autobahn                  17.10.1                   18.3.1
celery                    4.1.0                     4.2.0rc1
channels                  1.1.8                     2.0.0
daphne                    1.4.2                     2.0.0
Django                    1.11.9                    1.11.10
django-extensions         1.9.9                     2.0.0
django-polymorphic        1.3                       2.0
django-solo               1.1.2                     1.1.3
djangorestframework       3.7.7                     3.8.0
factory-boy               2.9.2                     2.10.0
Faker                     0.8.9                     0.8.10