# Foundry Local vs Core (slim)

> Foundry Local scores 60.5 (C) on agent readiness against Core's 7.3 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do local inference. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/foundry-local-vs-ghost-core.md (~2,750 tokens) · this version ~680 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/foundry-local-vs-ghost-core.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/foundry-local-vs-ghost-core
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-09

Foundry Local scores 60.5 (C) on agent readiness against Core's 7.3 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do local inference.

- Foundry Local: C 60.5, rank #461 of 842 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/foundry-local.min.md
- Core: F 7.3, rank #842 of 842 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/ghost-core.min.md
- Foundry Local, good for An application that ships a model to end users' Windows, macOS or Linux devices and wants NPU and GPU variants chosen automatically, especially on Windows. Ahead on Reliability, 68 against 5; Schema & documentation, 53 against 7; Agent ergonomics, 61 against 4; Security & auth, 39 against 6; Payments & pricing, 60 against 10; Maintenance & community, 88 against 3; Transparency & trust, 72 against 45. Also No key needed to call it; Free to start without a card; Open source.
- Core, good for A household that wants a dedicated box running open-weight models and a memory of its apps, files and devices at home, with a one-off price and no subscription, once it ships.

| Category | Foundry Local | Core |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 68 | 5 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 53 | 7 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 61 | 4 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 39 | 6 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 60 | 10 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 88 | 3 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 72 | 45 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Foundry Local | Core |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | SDK + MCP | Model platform |
| Vendor | Microsoft | Ghost (ZMJ, Inc.) |
| Auth | None | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Paid |
| Licence | MIT for the SDKs and the v2 native runtime. The CLI is closed source under Microsoft Software Licence Terms. Execution providers carry NVIDIA, Intel and Qualcomm licences, and each model carries its own | Not stated. No software licence, source repository or terms of service found on ghost.ai (checked 2026-10-05). Models listed are Qwen 3.8-Next, Qwen 3.8-27B, Gemma 4-31B and Muse-Glimmer-30B. Ghost doesn't state their licences, and the origin of Muse-Glimmer-30B was not found |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 | none |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2026-10-05 |
| Popularity | 2.6k stars, 105k npm/wk, 47k PyPI/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | none | 2/5 (1) |