# LocalAI vs TextGen

> LocalAI scores 68 (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.

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- Updated: 2026-10-09

LocalAI scores 68 (B) on agent readiness against TextGen's 45.1 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do local inference.

- LocalAI: grade B, 68/100, rank #216 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/localai.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/localai.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

### LocalAI (B)

Good for: An owner who wants one local server for chat, embeddings, reranking, speech, images and video behind APIs their existing OpenAI, Anthropic or Ollama clients already speak, on almost any accelerator.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 84 against 51
- Schema & documentation, 81 against 61
- Agent ergonomics, 71 against 50
- Security & auth, 62 against 40
- Maintenance & community, 80 against 24

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine

Watch for: No authentication by default. Loopback, LAN and VPN binds answer every caller, and keys set by environment variable grant full admin

### 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 | LocalAI | TextGen | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 84 | 51 | LocalAI +33 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 81 | 61 | LocalAI +20 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 71 | 50 | LocalAI +21 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 62 | 40 | LocalAI +22 |
| 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) | 80 | 24 | LocalAI +56 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 47 | 49 | TextGen +2 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -3 | -4 | |
| **Total** | | **68 · B** | **45.1 · E** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | LocalAI | TextGen |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | Model platform |
| Vendor | Ettore Di Giacinto and the LocalAI team | oobabooga |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT. Each backend image wraps an upstream engine (llama.cpp, vLLM, whisper.cpp, diffusers and others) under that engine's own licence | AGPL-3.0 |
| Tools exposed | 42 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-02 | 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 | 48k stars | 48k stars |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | none |

## Verdicts

**LocalAI.** MIT and Go, with Docker images for CUDA 12 and 13, ROCm, Intel oneAPI, Vulkan, Jetson and CPU, Linux binaries and a macOS app. No authentication by default. Loopback, LAN and VPN binds answer every caller, and keys set by environment variable grant full admin.

**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

### LocalAI

1. Send `Authorization: Bearer <key>` when the operator has set keys. A 401 means the instance has auth on
2. Read /.well-known/localai.json and /api/instructions first. Both answer without a key and list what this instance can do
3. Back off on 429 and 503 for the Retry-After seconds. A 503 can mean the model is still loading
4. Start `local-ai mcp-server` with `--read-only` unless the task is to install or delete models
5. Take model names from /v1/models. Each instance names its own

### 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, LocalAI or TextGen?

LocalAI scores 68 (B) on agent readiness against TextGen's 45.1 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories.

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

LocalAI runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. No hosted endpoint is listed for TextGen.

### Are LocalAI and TextGen open source?

Yes. LocalAI is open source (MIT. Each backend image wraps an upstream engine (llama.cpp, vLLM, whisper.cpp, diffusers and others) under that engine's own licence). TextGen is open source (AGPL-3.0).


## For agents

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

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