head to head · open source
LocalAI vs dagster
LocalAI has 49,147 GitHub stars, 4,457 forks, 201 open issues and last shipped today. dagster has 16,168 stars, 2,294 forks, 2,589 open issues and last shipped today. LocalAI leads on adoption by 204% (49,147 vs 16,168 stars). LocalAI is written in Go under MIT; dagster is written in Python under Apache-2.0. LocalAI has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, dagster 14%. LocalAI was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| LocalAI | dagster | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 49K | ★ 16K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.5K | ⑂ 2.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick LocalAI if
- You weight community size — 49K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick dagster if
- You want the dagster feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and dagster fits your workflow better
About LocalAI
LocalAI is an open source AI runtime that enables running large language models (LLMs), vision, audio, image, and video models locally or on premises. It operates as a modular engine where each model type is backed by a dedicated, lightweight backend—such as llama.cpp, whisper.cpp, or stable diffusion—pulled only when needed. This composable architecture avoids bundling unnecessary dependencies, keeping the core minimal while supporting diverse modalities and hardware configurations.
read the full LocalAI overview →
About dagster
Dagster is a cloud native data pipeline orchestrator written in Python and released under the Apache 2.0 licence, built for data engineers, data scientists, and machine learning teams who declare the tables, data sets, models, and reports their pipelines should produce and need those assets tested, observable, and kept up to date from local development through production.
read the full dagster overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is LocalAI or dagster more popular?
LocalAI has 49,147 GitHub stars and dagster has 16,168. LocalAI has the larger community by that measure.
Are LocalAI and dagster free?
Both are open source. LocalAI is licensed under MIT and dagster under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between LocalAI and dagster?
LocalAI is written in Go and dagster in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, LocalAI or dagster?
Choose LocalAI if you want the larger community (49,147 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose dagster if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.