# Foundry Local vs LM Studio (slim)

> Foundry Local scores 60.5 (C) on agent readiness against LM Studio's 57.8 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. LM Studio leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics and security & auth. Both do local inference. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side…

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/foundry-local-vs-lm-studio.md (~2,700 tokens) · this version ~780 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/foundry-local-vs-lm-studio.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/foundry-local-vs-lm-studio
- 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 LM Studio's 57.8 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. LM Studio leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics and security & auth. Both do local inference.

- Foundry Local: C 60.5, rank #461 of 842 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/foundry-local.min.md
- LM Studio: C 57.8, rank #536 of 842 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/lm-studio.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 34; Maintenance & community, 88 against 72; Transparency & trust, 72 against 60. Also No key needed to call it; Open source.
- LM Studio, good for A machine that serves open models to several agents and tools at once, in whichever API shape each client already speaks, and for headless serving on Linux with llmster. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 64 against 53; Agent ergonomics, 69 against 61; Security & auth, 59 against 39.

| Category | Foundry Local | LM Studio |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 68 | 34 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 53 | 64 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 61 | 69 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 39 | 59 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 60 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 88 | 72 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 72 | 60 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Foundry Local | LM Studio |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | SDK + MCP | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Microsoft | Element Labs, Inc. |
| Auth | None | API key |
| 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 | Proprietary. The app and llmster are free for personal and internal business use under LM Studio's terms (Element Labs, Inc., effective 23 August 2026), with no source published. The `lms` CLI and the TypeScript and Python SDKs are MIT |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 | 2026-09-19 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2026-06-01 |
| Customer content may train models |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 2.6k stars, 105k npm/wk, 47k PyPI/wk | 69k npm/wk, 15k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.5/5 (2) |