The growing number of vehicles in major cities has posed significant challenges in parking lot management. Motorists often have difficulty finding empty parking slots quickly, which not only wastes time but also aggravates traffic congestion and increases air pollution. This research develops a Python-based smart parking system by utilizing the OpenCV library to detect the status of parking slots in real-time. The system uses a camera as the main sensor and processes the image using techniques such as grayscale, Gaussian blur, and adaptive threshold to identify the parking slot status, whether empty or occupied, with good accuracy. The parking slot coordinate data is stored in CSV format to ensure efficient data management. Experimental results with video recordings show that the system is able to operate well in various parking conditions. The system proved to be cost-effective and easy to implement, making it an ideal solution for parking managers who want to improve management efficiency without being burdened with high costs. This research offers a practical solution to help motorists and parking managers optimize parking space usage, reduce search time, and minimize negative impacts such as congestion and carbon emissions.