AnythingLLM vs TextGen

AnythingLLM

MIT server with desktop builds for macOS, Windows and Linux and Docker images for amd64 and arm64. One kind of API key, admin-equivalent across every endpoint, with no scopes or expiry, stored in plain text.

TextGen

AGPL-3.0 with no telemetry, and a local API on 127.0.0.1:5000 that checks the Host header, limits CORS to localhost and separates an admin key from the caller's key. No release since v4.9 on 20 May 2026, no code commits since 31 May, no test suite, and ten security advisories in the year, all fixed.

AnythingLLM

1. Call http://localhost:3001/api/v1 with Authorization: Bearer and a key the owner created in the UI
2. Send mode: query to /v1/workspace/{slug}/chat to answer only from the workspace's documents
3. Treat the key as admin. It can delete workspaces, users and documents
4. Read /api/docs on the instance for the endpoint list. Request bodies there are examples, not schemas
5. Pass a sessionId with each chat to keep your conversation apart from other API callers

TextGen

1. Ask the owner to launch with --api. Nothing listens on port 5000 without it, and a model must be loaded first
2. Call http://127.0.0.1:5000/v1. Any Host header other than localhost or 127.0.0.1 gets 400 Invalid host header unless --listen is set
3. Send the key as Authorization: Bearer on OpenAI routes and as x-api-key on /v1/messages. Model loading needs the admin key
4. Read http://127.0.0.1:5000/docs or modules/api/typing.py for parameters. max_tokens defaults to 512 on chat completions
5. Run tool calls yourself. The API returns finish_reason: "tool_calls" and executes nothing on the server
6. Use the repository name oobabooga/textgen. The old text-generation-webui URL redirects