diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index ee808dd2b..b06fd4442 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 
 ## [UNRELEASED]
 
-No user facing changes.
+- Python automatic dependency installation will no longer fail for projects using Poetry that specify `virtualenvs.options.no-pip = true` in their `poetry.toml`. [#1431](https://github.com/github/codeql-action/pull/1431).
 
 ## 2.1.38 - 12 Jan 2023
 
diff --git a/python-setup/find_site_packages.py b/python-setup/find_site_packages.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..a473ce66a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/python-setup/find_site_packages.py
@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+"""
+Print the path to the site-packages directory for the current Python environment.
+"""
+
+try:
+    import pip
+    import os
+    print(os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(pip.__file__)))
+except ImportError:
+    import sys
+    print("could not import pip", file=sys.stderr)
+    # if you use poetry with `virtualenvs.options.no-pip = true` you might end up with a
+    # virtualenv without pip, so the above trick doesn't actually work. See
+    # https://python-poetry.org/docs/configuration/#virtualenvsoptionsno-pip
+    #
+    # A possible option is to install `pip` into the virtualenv created by poetry
+    # (`poetry add pip`), but it turns out that doesn't always work :( for the test
+    # poetry/requests-3, I was not allowed to install pip! So I did not pursue this
+    # option further.
+    #
+    # Instead, local testing shows that first entry of `site.getsitepackages()` has the
+    # right path, whereas `site.getusersitepackages()` is about the system python (very
+    # confusing).
+    #
+    # We can't use the environment variable POETRY_VIRTUALENVS_OPTIONS_NO_PIP because it
+    # does not work, see https://github.com/python-poetry/poetry/issues/5906
+    import site
+    print(site.getsitepackages()[0])
diff --git a/python-setup/tests/from_python_exe.py b/python-setup/tests/from_python_exe.py
index 19702cf37..d5bf1624f 100755
--- a/python-setup/tests/from_python_exe.py
+++ b/python-setup/tests/from_python_exe.py
@@ -9,8 +9,7 @@ def get_details(path_to_python_exe: str) -> Tuple[str, str]:
     import_path = subprocess.check_output(
         [
             path_to_python_exe,
-            "-c",
-            "import os; import pip; print(os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(pip.__file__)))",
+            os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), "find_site_packages.py")
         ],
         stdin=subprocess.DEVNULL,
     )
diff --git a/python-setup/tests/poetry/requests-3/poetry.toml b/python-setup/tests/poetry/requests-3/poetry.toml
index ab1033bd3..afbc8b90c 100644
--- a/python-setup/tests/poetry/requests-3/poetry.toml
+++ b/python-setup/tests/poetry/requests-3/poetry.toml
@@ -1,2 +1,5 @@
 [virtualenvs]
 in-project = true
+
+[virtualenvs.options]
+no-pip = true
diff --git a/src/analyze.ts b/src/analyze.ts
index 00a72f21a..629ea2e4d 100644
--- a/src/analyze.ts
+++ b/src/analyze.ts
@@ -88,6 +88,8 @@ async function setupPythonExtractor(logger: Logger) {
     return;
   }
 
+  const scriptsFolder = path.resolve(__dirname, "../python-setup");
+
   let output = "";
   const options = {
     listeners: {
@@ -100,8 +102,7 @@ async function setupPythonExtractor(logger: Logger) {
   await new toolrunner.ToolRunner(
     codeqlPython,
     [
-      "-c",
-      "import os; import pip; print(os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(pip.__file__)))",
+      path.join(scriptsFolder, "find_site_packages.py"),
     ],
     options
   ).exec();