# Lemonade vs llama.cpp

> Lemonade scores 63.8 (B) on agent readiness against llama.cpp's 60.2 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. llama.cpp leads on security & auth and maintenance & community. Both do local inference. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lemonade-vs-llama-cpp
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- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lemonade-vs-llama-cpp.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-09

Lemonade scores 63.8 (B) on agent readiness against llama.cpp's 60.2 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. llama.cpp leads on security & auth and maintenance & community. Both do local inference.

- Lemonade: grade B, 63.8/100, rank #336 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/lemonade.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/lemonade.json
- llama.cpp: grade C, 60.2/100, rank #476 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/llama-cpp.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/llama-cpp.json

## Which one, for what

### 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 64
- Schema & documentation, 70 against 47

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

### llama.cpp (C)

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:
- Security & auth, 52 against 36
- Maintenance & community, 81 against 76

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it

Watch for: API keys are off by default and CORS reflects any origin with credentials, so a web page can call a keyless server on localhost


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Lemonade | llama.cpp | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 75 | 64 | Lemonade +11 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 70 | 47 | Lemonade +23 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 70 | 73 | llama.cpp +3 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 36 | 52 | llama.cpp +16 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 60 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 76 | 81 | llama.cpp +5 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 64 | 60 | Lemonade +4 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -1 | |
| **Total** | | **63.8 · B** | **60.2 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Lemonade | llama.cpp |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | AMD and the Lemonade community | ggml.ai (Hugging Face) |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache 2.0. Each backend (llama.cpp, whisper.cpp, stable-diffusion.cpp, FastFlowLM and others) is downloaded separately under its own licence | MIT |
| Tools exposed | 6 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-07 | 2026-09-23 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models |  |  |
| Terms restrict automated access |  |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  |  |
| Popularity | 5.8k stars | 130k stars |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.5/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**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.

**llama.cpp.** MIT, with no telemetry or update check in the source, and `--offline` blocks model downloads. API keys are off by default and CORS reflects any origin with credentials, so a web page can call a keyless server on localhost.

## Before you call either

### 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

### llama.cpp

1. Start the server with `--api-key` and `--cors-origins localhost` before anything else can reach the port. Both are off by default
2. Pass `n_predict` or `max_tokens`. Generation is unbounded by default
3. Send `response_fields` to /completion to drop the fields you don't read
4. Wait and retry on a 503 `unavailable_error`. The model is still loading
5. Read the server README of the build you run. Behaviour changes between nightly builds without a changelog entry

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Lemonade or llama.cpp?

Lemonade scores 63.8 (B) on agent readiness against llama.cpp's 60.2 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. llama.cpp leads on security & auth and maintenance & community.

### Do Lemonade and llama.cpp need an API key?

Lemonade needs an API key. llama.cpp needs no key.

### Can an agent call Lemonade and llama.cpp without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Lemonade. No hosted endpoint is listed for llama.cpp.

### Are Lemonade and llama.cpp open source?

Yes. 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). llama.cpp is open source (MIT).


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lemonade-vs-llama-cpp.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lemonade-vs-llama-cpp.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "lemonade", "b": "llama-cpp"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare lemonade llama-cpp`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/lemonade.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/llama-cpp.json

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