Foundry Local vs Jan

Foundry Local

The SDK and its native runtime are MIT, at 2.1.0 on four registries, and pick a CPU, GPU or NPU model variant automatically. The optional local server has no credential, its current routes aren't in the published REST reference, and telemetry is on by default with an opt-out.

Jan

Apache-2.0, with installers for macOS, Windows and Linux plus Flathub and the Microsoft Store. No release since 0.8.4 on 23 July 2026, while a security fix waits on main.

Foundry Local

1. Read the server URL from manager.urls[0] or foundry server status. The port is dynamic unless the owner sets web.urls or foundry server start --port
2. Send the model ID that GET /v1/models returns, not the alias. The alias resolves to a hardware-specific variant
3. Check supportsToolCalling before sending tools. Support differs by variant, and issue #1183 reports Qwen tool calling failing on QNN
4. Set your own request timeout. Inference has no built-in one, and cancellation takes effect only after the current generation step
5. Ask the owner to set ORT_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=1 or disableNonessentialTelemetry before the manager is created if telemetry must be off

Jan

1. Ask the owner to start the server (Settings, Local API Server) or run jan serve. Nothing listens until then
2. Call http://127.0.0.1:1337/v1 for the app and localhost:6767/v1 for jan serve. The ports differ
3. Read /openapi.json from the running server, not the spec on the docs site, which describes the retired Cortex API
4. Branch on the status code. Error bodies are plain text
5. Keep the bind at 127.0.0.1 on 0.8.4. Trusted Hosts is ignored on 0.0.0.0 until the next release