# KoboldCpp vs llama.cpp (slim)

> KoboldCpp and llama.cpp score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 60.5 (C) and 60.2 (C). llama.cpp leads on agent ergonomics, security & auth and transparency & trust. Both do local inference. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/koboldcpp-vs-llama-cpp.md (~2,450 tokens) · this version ~530 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/koboldcpp-vs-llama-cpp.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/koboldcpp-vs-llama-cpp
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-09

KoboldCpp and llama.cpp score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 60.5 (C) and 60.2 (C). llama.cpp leads on agent ergonomics, security & auth and transparency & trust. Both do local inference.

- KoboldCpp: C 60.5, rank #462 of 842 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/koboldcpp.min.md
- llama.cpp: C 60.2, rank #476 of 842 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/llama-cpp.min.md
- KoboldCpp, good for An owner who wants text, image, speech and music models behind one executable with a writing and roleplay interface, and clients that speak the KoboldAI, OpenAI, Ollama or Anthropic formats. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 68 against 47.
- llama.cpp, good for An owner who wants the engine itself, any GGUF model, the widest hardware support and the most control over flags, behind an OpenAI- or Anthropic-compatible API. Ahead on Agent ergonomics, 73 against 63; Security & auth, 52 against 38; Transparency & trust, 60 against 49.

| Category | KoboldCpp | llama.cpp |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 68 | 64 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 68 | 47 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 63 | 73 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 38 | 52 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 60 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 82 | 81 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 49 | 60 |

| Fact (where they differ) | KoboldCpp | llama.cpp |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | LostRuins (Concedo) | ggml.ai (Hugging Face) |
| Licence | AGPL-3.0 for KoboldCpp and KoboldAI Lite. The bundled GGML, llama.cpp and stable-diffusion.cpp code stays under MIT | MIT |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-09-27 | 2026-09-23 |
| Popularity | 12k stars | 130k stars |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.5/5 (2) |