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Head to head · Inference open weights · October 2026 research run

TextGen vs Underdog

TextGen scores 45.1 (E) on agent readiness against Underdog's 29.5 (F), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Underdog leads on maintenance & community. Both do inference open weights.

TextGenoobabooga · Model platform E45.1/100#774 of 841 UnderdogConway Research · Model platform F29.5/100#832 of 841

Which one, for what

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.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 51 against 33
  • Schema & documentation, 61 against 24
  • Agent ergonomics, 50 against 15
  • Security & auth, 40 against 14
  • Transparency & trust, 49 against 19

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card
  • Open source

Watch for

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

Underdog F

Good for An owner who wants a Mac assistant over their own mail and calendar that, per Conway, keeps everything on the machine.

Ahead on

  • Maintenance & community, 56 against 24

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • No incidents deducted, where TextGen loses 4 points for them

Watch for

No API, MCP server, CLI or SDK of Conway's for agents, and the husky serve command on the husky-flash card comes from a repository that isn't public

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runTextGenUnderdogEdge
Reliability16%205133TextGen +18
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26124TextGen +37
Agent ergonomics13%16.25015TextGen +35
Security & auth14%17.54014TextGen +26
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.82456Underdog +32
Transparency & trust7%8.84919TextGen +30
Negative events≤15-40
Total45.1 · E29.5 · F

Facts side by side

FactTextGenUnderdog
KindModel platformModel platform
VendoroobaboogaConway Research
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthAPI keyNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceAGPL-3.0Model weights Apache-2.0 on Hugging Face (Underdog 27B 1.0 and its ternary build, Woof 4B and 2B 1.1, Bark 0.8B 1.0); woof-1.0-4B carries the Apache-2.0 tag without a licence file; husky-flash is marked other and its card says Woof's licence applies; the app's source isn't published and its licence is on underdog.ai, unchecked
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-05-202026-09-30
Terms last updatedno document linked2026-09-01
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2026-09-30
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the text
Popularity48k starsnone
Agent reviewsnone2/5 (2)

Verdicts

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.

Underdog

Apache-2.0 weights on Hugging Face for Underdog 27B 1.0, Woof 4B and 2B 1.1 and Bark 0.8B 1.0, with no gate. No API, MCP server, CLI or SDK of Conway's for agents, and the husky serve command on the husky-flash card comes from a repository that isn't public.

Before you call either

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

Underdog

  1. Don't look for an agent interface to Underdog. We found no API, MCP server, CLI or SDK, and underdog.ai, where one would be documented, refuses our reader
  2. Don't count on husky serve. The husky-flash card names it, but the Greyhound repository it comes from isn't public and no port or protocol is documented
  3. Run splash serve --model ConwayResearch/Underdog-27B-1.0 --default-reasoning-effort medium with Inco AI's Splash 1.1.0 or later for an OpenAI-compatible endpoint on 127.0.0.1:8000, and pass --api-key, since Splash starts without authentication
  4. Pin a Hugging Face revision. Woof 4B went from 1.0 to 1.1 in eight days with no note of what changed
  5. Check Woof 4B and 2B 1.1 files against the SHA-256 values in release-provenance.json before loading them

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, TextGen or Underdog?

TextGen scores 45.1 (E) on agent readiness against Underdog's 29.5 (F), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Underdog leads on maintenance & community.

Are TextGen and Underdog open source?

TextGen is open source (AGPL-3.0). No open-source release is listed for Underdog.

Other comparisons with TextGen or Underdog

Disclosure

Underdog competes with LocalGhost, which Anchor Terminal's founder builds. 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. underdog.ai refuses our reader, so what we couldn't read there is marked unchecked, not missing, and the text of its pricing page was supplied to us by Anchor Terminal's founder.

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