# KoboldCpp vs MLX LM (slim)

> KoboldCpp scores 60.5 (C) on agent readiness against MLX LM's 52.2 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. MLX LM leads on transparency & trust. Both do local inference. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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

KoboldCpp scores 60.5 (C) on agent readiness against MLX LM's 52.2 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. MLX LM leads on transparency & trust. Both do local inference.

- KoboldCpp: C 60.5, rank #462 of 842 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/koboldcpp.min.md
- MLX LM: D 52.2, rank #657 of 842 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/mlx-lm.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 37; Agent ergonomics, 63 against 54; Security & auth, 38 against 32; Maintenance & community, 82 against 61.
- MLX LM, good for An owner with an Apple silicon Mac who wants MLX-format models, local fine-tuning and quantisation from Python or the command line, with a simple local chat completions server. Ahead on Transparency & trust, 66 against 49.

| Category | KoboldCpp | MLX LM |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 68 | 66 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 68 | 37 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 63 | 54 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 38 | 32 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 60 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 82 | 61 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 49 | 66 |

| Fact (where they differ) | KoboldCpp | MLX LM |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | LostRuins (Concedo) | Apple Inc. |
| 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 | 2026-10-01 |
| Popularity | 12k stars | 7.3k stars, 140k PyPI/wk |