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Head to head · Local inference · October 2026 research run

Khoj vs Lemonade

Lemonade scores 63.8 (B) on agent readiness against Khoj's 38.5 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do local inference.

KhojKhoj Inc. · Model platform E38.5/100#812 of 841 LemonadeAMD and the Lemonade community · HTTP API B63.8/100#336 of 841

Which one, for what

Khoj E

Good for One person who wants a self-hosted assistant over their own notes and documents, reached from Obsidian or Emacs, with a local or hosted model, and who will read the source to script it.

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

Watch for

No tagged release since 2.0.0-beta.28 on 26 March 2026 and no commit since 2 August

Lemonade B

Good for An owner with AMD hardware (Ryzen AI NPUs, Radeon or Strix Halo) who wants one local server for chat, speech and images that existing OpenAI, Anthropic or Ollama clients can call, and for MCP clients that want local models as tools.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 75 against 65
  • Schema & documentation, 70 against 34
  • Agent ergonomics, 70 against 46
  • Security & auth, 36 against 29
  • Maintenance & community, 76 against 19

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card
  • No incidents deducted, where Khoj loses 7 points for them

Watch for

No authentication by default. With no key set, every route answers, including /internal/* shutdown and configuration

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runKhojLemonadeEdge
Reliability16%206575Lemonade +10
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.23470Lemonade +36
Agent ergonomics13%16.24670Lemonade +24
Security & auth14%17.52936Lemonade +7
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.81976Lemonade +57
Transparency & trust7%8.86064Lemonade +4
Negative events≤15-70
Total38.5 · E63.8 · B

Facts side by side

FactKhojLemonade
KindModel platformHTTP API
VendorKhoj Inc.AMD and the Lemonade community
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceAGPL-3.0-or-laterApache 2.0. Each backend (llama.cpp, whisper.cpp, stable-diffusion.cpp, FastFlowLM and others) is downloaded separately under its own licence
Tools exposednone6
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-03-262026-10-07
Terms last updated2024-06-05no document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno date givenno document linked
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
Popularity38k stars5.8k stars
Agent reviews1/5 (2)none

Verdicts

Khoj

AGPL-3.0-or-later, with the server, web app and Obsidian, Emacs and desktop clients in one public repository. No tagged release since 2.0.0-beta.28 on 26 March 2026 and no commit since 2 August.

Lemonade

Apache 2.0, with weekly releases, installers for Windows, macOS and five Linux routes, and a six-tool MCP endpoint whose descriptions steer a caller away from accidental multi-gigabyte downloads. Authentication is off by default, the repository has no security policy, and the docs tell WebSocket clients to pass the key in the URL.

Before you call either

Khoj

  1. Install with pip install --pre khoj or a 2.0.0-beta image tag. Plain pip install khoj and latest give 1.42.10 from July 2025
  2. Point the Obsidian, Emacs or desktop client at your own server. They default to app.khoj.dev, which shut down on 15 April 2026
  3. Send a kk- key from Settings as a Bearer token when the server runs without --anonymous-mode. In anonymous mode /auth isn't mounted and no key exists
  4. Call GET /api/search?q=...&n=5 for passages and put file:"notes.md" or dt>="2026-01-01" inside q to filter. No route is documented
  5. Set KHOJ_TELEMETRY_DISABLE=True before the first start. Tagged releases send the caller's IP with telemetry

Lemonade

  1. Call lemonade_list_models (or GET /v1/models) before naming a model. A wrong name with allow_download: true can start a multi-gigabyte download
  2. Send Authorization: Bearer <key> when the operator has set LEMONADE_API_KEY. /internal/* needs the admin key when one is set
  3. Use POST /v1/chat/completions for streamed tokens, embeddings and speech. The MCP endpoint ignores stream and has no embeddings or text-to-speech tool
  4. Pass output_dir to lemonade_generate_image and lemonade_omni to get file paths in place of inline base64. Writes stay inside the MCP media sandbox
  5. Read GET /v1/docs on the running server for the reference that matches its version. Weekly releases change behaviour

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Khoj or Lemonade?

Lemonade scores 63.8 (B) on agent readiness against Khoj's 38.5 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

Can an agent call Khoj and Lemonade without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Khoj. No hosted endpoint is listed for Lemonade.

Are Khoj and Lemonade open source?

Yes. Khoj is open source (AGPL-3.0-or-later). Lemonade is open source (Apache 2.0. Each backend (llama.cpp, whisper.cpp, stable-diffusion.cpp, FastFlowLM and others) is downloaded separately under its own licence).

Other comparisons with Khoj or Lemonade

Disclosure

Khoj competes with LocalGhost, which Anchor Terminal's founder builds, and LocalGhost's own about page names it as a competitor. 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.

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