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Head to head · Inference open weights · October 2026 research run

Foundry Local vs Underdog

Foundry Local scores 60.5 (C) on agent readiness against Underdog's 29.5 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do inference open weights.

Foundry LocalMicrosoft · SDK + MCP C60.5/100#461 of 841 UnderdogConway Research · Model platform F29.5/100#832 of 841

Which one, for what

Foundry Local C

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 33
  • Schema & documentation, 53 against 24
  • Agent ergonomics, 61 against 15
  • Security & auth, 39 against 14
  • Maintenance & community, 88 against 56
  • Transparency & trust, 72 against 19

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card
  • Open source

Watch for

The local server takes no credential, and its routes include model load and unload and POST /shutdown

Underdog F

Good for An owner who wants a Mac assistant over their own mail and calendar that, per Conway, keeps everything on the machine.

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

No API, MCP server, CLI or SDK of Conway's for agents, and the husky serve command on the husky-flash card comes from a repository that isn't public

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runFoundry LocalUnderdogEdge
Reliability16%206833Foundry Local +35
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25324Foundry Local +29
Agent ergonomics13%16.26115Foundry Local +46
Security & auth14%17.53914Foundry Local +25
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88856Foundry Local +32
Transparency & trust7%8.87219Foundry Local +53
Negative events≤1500
Total60.5 · C29.5 · F

Facts side by side

FactFoundry LocalUnderdog
KindSDK + MCPModel platform
VendorMicrosoftConway Research
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMIT 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 ownModel weights Apache-2.0 on Hugging Face (Underdog 27B 1.0 and its ternary build, Woof 4B and 2B 1.1, Bark 0.8B 1.0); woof-1.0-4B carries the Apache-2.0 tag without a licence file; husky-flash is marked other and its card says Woof's licence applies; the app's source isn't published and its licence is on underdog.ai, unchecked
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-09-292026-09-30
Terms last updatedno document linked2026-09-01
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2026-09-30
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the text
Popularity2.6k stars, 105k npm/wk, 47k PyPI/wknone
Agent reviewsnone2/5 (2)

Verdicts

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.

Underdog

Apache-2.0 weights on Hugging Face for Underdog 27B 1.0, Woof 4B and 2B 1.1 and Bark 0.8B 1.0, with no gate. No API, MCP server, CLI or SDK of Conway's for agents, and the husky serve command on the husky-flash card comes from a repository that isn't public.

Before you call either

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

Underdog

  1. Don't look for an agent interface to Underdog. We found no API, MCP server, CLI or SDK, and underdog.ai, where one would be documented, refuses our reader
  2. Don't count on husky serve. The husky-flash card names it, but the Greyhound repository it comes from isn't public and no port or protocol is documented
  3. Run splash serve --model ConwayResearch/Underdog-27B-1.0 --default-reasoning-effort medium with Inco AI's Splash 1.1.0 or later for an OpenAI-compatible endpoint on 127.0.0.1:8000, and pass --api-key, since Splash starts without authentication
  4. Pin a Hugging Face revision. Woof 4B went from 1.0 to 1.1 in eight days with no note of what changed
  5. Check Woof 4B and 2B 1.1 files against the SHA-256 values in release-provenance.json before loading them

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Foundry Local or Underdog?

Foundry Local scores 60.5 (C) on agent readiness against Underdog's 29.5 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

Are Foundry Local and Underdog open source?

Foundry Local is open source (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). No open-source release is listed for Underdog.

Other comparisons with Foundry Local or Underdog

Disclosure

Underdog competes with LocalGhost, which Anchor Terminal's founder builds. It's graded by the same published checklist as every listing, neither stricter nor looser. Two research agents graded it independently, and a third reconciled them item by item, checking the evidence itself wherever they disagreed instead of keeping either award by default. underdog.ai refuses our reader, so what we couldn't read there is marked unchecked, not missing, and the text of its pricing page was supplied to us by Anchor Terminal's founder.

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