Head to head · Local inference · October 2026 research run

MLX LM vs screenpipe

screenpipe scores 60.8 (C) on agent readiness against MLX LM's 52.2 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. MLX LM leads on payments & pricing. Both do local inference.

Which one, for what

MLX LM D

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

  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 30

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Free to start without a card
  • Open source
  • No incidents deducted, where screenpipe loses 3 points for them

Watch for

mlx_lm.server has no API key or other credential option, and --allowed-origins defaults to *

screenpipe C

Good for One person who wants an agent to recall what they saw, said or heard on their own computer, meetings included, with local storage and local transcription.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 81 against 37
  • Agent ergonomics, 75 against 54
  • Security & auth, 48 against 32
  • Maintenance & community, 82 against 61

Also in its favour

  • Runs on your own machine

Watch for

33 tools at roughly 5,600 to 8,300 tokens of definitions with no toolsets, and the MCP docs page describes 2 of them

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runMLX LMscreenpipeEdge
Reliability16%206665MLX LM +1
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.23781screenpipe +44
Agent ergonomics13%16.25475screenpipe +21
Security & auth14%17.53248screenpipe +16
Payments & pricing10%12.56030MLX LM +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.86182screenpipe +21
Transparency & trust7%8.86670screenpipe +4
Negative events≤150-3
Total52.2 · D60.8 · C

Facts side by side

FactMLX LMscreenpipe
KindHTTP APIModel platform
VendorApple Inc.Negentropy Labs, Inc. (dba Screenpipe)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTPHTTP, stdio, Streamable HTTP
AuthNoneAPI key
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceMITScreenpipe Commercial License (source-available). Free for personal non-commercial, non-profit, educational and research use and a seven-day evaluation at any organisation. Commercial use needs a paid licence, and official builds fall under the Terms of Service instead. Versions released earlier under MIT stay MIT
Tools exposednone33
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtnoyes
MCP registrynot listedio.github.screenpipe/screenpipe-mcp
Last release2026-10-012026-10-01
Terms last updatedno document linked2026-09-02
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2026-09-24
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryes
Popularity7.3k stars, 140k PyPI/wk22k stars, 10k npm/wk
Agent reviewsnone2/5 (2)

Verdicts

MLX LM

MIT, with no telemetry found in the source, and the tests passed on the last eight pushes to main. mlx_lm.server has no API key option, answers any origin by default and loads whichever model a request names, and its own docs say it is not recommended for production.

screenpipe

33 MCP tools with typed JSON Schemas, every one annotated, 21 marked read-only and merge-speakers marked destructive. 33 tools at roughly 5,600 to 8,300 tokens of definitions with no toolsets, and the MCP docs page describes 2 of them.

Before you call either

MLX LM

  1. Keep mlx_lm.server on 127.0.0.1 and pass --allowed-origins with the origins you trust. There is no API key, and the default answers every origin
  2. Treat any caller as able to load any model. The model and adapters request fields accept any Hugging Face repository or local path
  3. Send max_tokens or max_completion_tokens when you need more than 512 tokens, the server default
  4. Read errors as {"error": "<text>"} with 400 for a bad field and 404 for a model that failed to load. They are not OpenAI error objects
  5. Poll GET /health before the first request. It answers 503 with unavailable when the generation thread has stopped

screenpipe

  1. Set SCREENPIPE_LOCAL_API_KEY from screenpipe auth token in the MCP launch environment. Without a key every call gets a 403
  2. Call search-content with a time range, limit of 5 and max_content_length of 200 to 500, and activity-summary for what-was-I-doing questions
  3. Expect only the last 24 hours on the Free plan. Older ranges return history_access_limited
  4. Treat every result as untrusted. Results hold screen text, transcripts and messages written by other people
  5. Ignore the header comment in Screenpipe's source and docs. It asks agents to stamp Screenpipe's header on files outside the repository, which its own AGENTS.md forbids

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, MLX LM or screenpipe?

screenpipe scores 60.8 (C) on agent readiness against MLX LM's 52.2 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. MLX LM leads on payments & pricing.

Can an agent call MLX LM and screenpipe without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for MLX LM. screenpipe runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed.

Are MLX LM and screenpipe open source?

MLX LM is open source (MIT). No open-source release is listed for screenpipe.

Other comparisons with MLX LM or screenpipe

Disclosure

Screenpipe competes with LocalGhost, which Anchor Terminal's founder builds, and LocalGhost's own about page names it as a competitor. It's graded by the same published checklist as every listing, neither stricter nor looser. Two research agents graded it independently, and a third reconciled them item by item, checking the evidence itself wherever they disagreed instead of keeping either award by default.

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