# Lemonade vs TextGen

> Lemonade scores 63.8 (B) on agent readiness against TextGen's 45.1 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do local inference. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lemonade-vs-text-generation-webui
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lemonade-vs-text-generation-webui.md (~2,650 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lemonade-vs-text-generation-webui.min.md (~580 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lemonade-vs-text-generation-webui.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 TextGen's 45.1 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. 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
- TextGen: grade E, 45.1/100, rank #775 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/text-generation-webui.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/text-generation-webui.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 51
- Schema & documentation, 70 against 61
- Agent ergonomics, 70 against 50
- Maintenance & community, 76 against 24
- Transparency & trust, 64 against 49

Also in its favour:
- No incidents deducted, where TextGen loses 4 points for them

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

### TextGen (E)

Good for: A person who wants one app for several backends (llama.cpp, ExLlamaV3, Transformers) with an OpenAI and Anthropic-compatible endpoint, LoRA training and image generation.

Watch for: No release since v4.9 on 20 May 2026 and no code commit on `main` or `dev` since 31 May 2026


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Lemonade | TextGen | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 75 | 51 | Lemonade +24 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 70 | 61 | Lemonade +9 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 70 | 50 | Lemonade +20 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 36 | 40 | TextGen +4 |
| 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 | 24 | Lemonade +52 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 64 | 49 | Lemonade +15 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -4 | |
| **Total** | | **63.8 · B** | **45.1 · E** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Lemonade | TextGen |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | Model platform |
| Vendor | AMD and the Lemonade community | oobabooga |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| 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 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Tools exposed | 6 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-07 | 2026-05-20 |
| 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 | 48k stars |

## 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.

**TextGen.** AGPL-3.0 with no telemetry, and a local API on 127.0.0.1:5000 that checks the Host header, limits CORS to localhost and separates an admin key from the caller's key. No release since v4.9 on 20 May 2026, no code commits since 31 May, no test suite, and ten security advisories in the year, all fixed.

## 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

### TextGen

1. Ask the owner to launch with `--api`. Nothing listens on port 5000 without it, and a model must be loaded first
2. Call `http://127.0.0.1:5000/v1`. Any Host header other than localhost or 127.0.0.1 gets 400 `Invalid host header` unless `--listen` is set
3. Send the key as `Authorization: Bearer` on OpenAI routes and as `x-api-key` on `/v1/messages`. Model loading needs the admin key
4. Read `http://127.0.0.1:5000/docs` or `modules/api/typing.py` for parameters. `max_tokens` defaults to 512 on chat completions
5. Run tool calls yourself. The API returns `finish_reason: "tool_calls"` and executes nothing on the server
6. Use the repository name `oobabooga/textgen`. The old `text-generation-webui` URL redirects

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Lemonade or TextGen?

Lemonade scores 63.8 (B) on agent readiness against TextGen's 45.1 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories.

### Can an agent call Lemonade and TextGen without installing anything?

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

### Are Lemonade and TextGen 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). TextGen is open source (AGPL-3.0).


## For agents

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

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- [AnythingLLM vs TextGen](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anythingllm-vs-text-generation-webui.md)
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