The fastest way to get pip is to install Python via Homebrew. Modern Python ships with pip built in — no separate install needed.
On macOS, the system Python is unreliable for development — Apple ships an old version, and they don't intend it for everyday Python work. Always install your own Python via Homebrew, pyenv, or uv. The cleanest one-shot Mac setup is brew install python@3.13 (or whichever version is current), which gives you both python3.13 and pip3.13 on PATH.
After install, verify with python3 --version and pip3 --version. The 3 suffix matters historically because macOS used to ship a system Python 2 — the suffix avoided confusion. On a modern Apple Silicon Mac with no system Python 2, you can usually use python and pip too, but the explicit 3 stays safer.
Upgrade pip itself with pip3 install --upgrade pip. The pip bundled with a Python release is whatever was current at release time — often a few minor versions behind.