head to head · open source

llama.cpp vs paradedb

llama.cpp has 128,581 GitHub stars, 23,334 forks, 2,464 open issues and last shipped yesterday. paradedb has 9,276 stars, 457 forks, 193 open issues and last shipped yesterday. llama.cpp leads on adoption by 1,286% (128,581 vs 9,276 stars). llama.cpp is written in C++ under MIT; paradedb is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0. llama.cpp has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, paradedb 5%. paradedb 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.

llama.cpp ★ 129K paradedb ★ 9.3K category AI & Machine Learning

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Side by side

	llama.cpp	paradedb
GitHub stars	★ 129K	★ 9.3K
License	MIT	AGPL-3.0
Written in	C++	Rust
Last push	2026-09-17	2026-09-17
Forks	⑂ 23K	⑂ 457
Self-hosting	Yes	Yes
Data ownership	Your server	Your server

pick llama.cpp if

You weight community size — 129K stars and counting
You want the MIT license terms
Your stack matches C++
You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance

full llama.cpp profile →

pick paradedb if

You want the paradedb feature set and don't need the biggest community
You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
Your stack matches Rust
You evaluated both and paradedb fits your workflow better

full paradedb profile →

About llama.cpp

llama.cpp is a C/C++ library and set of command line tools for running large language models (LLMs) and vision language models (VLMs) locally. It enables inference without external dependencies, targeting diverse hardware including Apple Silicon, x86 CPUs, NVIDIA GPUs (via CUDA), AMD GPUs (via HIP), and other accelerators. The project lives in the ggml ecosystem, leveraging the ggml tensor computation library for low level operations and quantized model execution.

read the full llama.cpp overview →

About paradedb

ParadeDB is an AGPL 3.0 PostgreSQL extension, written in Rust and distributed from the paradedb repository, that upgrades Postgres with full text search, BM25 scoring, vector retrieval, and aggregations so application data and the search engine live in one database — intended for teams that would otherwise deploy and sync a separate search system.

read the full paradedb overview →

More in AI & Machine Learning

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llama.cpp vs Ollama llama.cpp vs vllm llama.cpp vs GPT4All llama.cpp vs llama_index llama.cpp vs LocalAI llama.cpp vs PageIndex llama.cpp vs Langfuse llama.cpp vs cognee llama.cpp vs taipy llama.cpp vs dagster llama.cpp vs zvec llama.cpp vs langchain4j

Frequently asked questions

Is llama.cpp or paradedb more popular?

llama.cpp has 128,581 GitHub stars and paradedb has 9,276. llama.cpp has the larger community by that measure.

Are llama.cpp and paradedb free?

Both are open source. llama.cpp is licensed under MIT and paradedb under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.

What is the difference between llama.cpp and paradedb?

llama.cpp is written in C++ and paradedb in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.

Which should I choose, llama.cpp or paradedb?

Choose llama.cpp if you want the larger community (128,581 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose paradedb if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.