head to head · open source
LocalAI vs Beam
LocalAI has 49,179 GitHub stars, 4,458 forks, 201 open issues and last shipped today. Beam has 1,783 stars, 166 forks, 21 open issues and last shipped yesterday. LocalAI leads on adoption by 2,658% (49,179 vs 1,783 stars). LocalAI is written in Go under MIT; Beam is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. LocalAI has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Beam 9%. LocalAI was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (llm), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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 | Beam | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 49K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.5K | ⑂ 166 |
| 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 Beam if
- You want the Beam feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Beam 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 Beam
Beam is an open source runtime for serverless AI workloads, released under AGPL 3.0 and implemented in Go. It lives in the Python AI infrastructure ecosystem, where it gives developers a Pythonic interface for deploying and scaling GPU inference, sandboxes, and background jobs without managing infrastructure. The open source engine is Beta9, which powers the managed Beam cloud platform.
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Frequently asked questions
Is LocalAI or Beam more popular?
LocalAI has 49,179 GitHub stars and Beam has 1,783. LocalAI has the larger community by that measure.
Are LocalAI and Beam free?
Both are open source. LocalAI is licensed under MIT and Beam under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between LocalAI and Beam?
LocalAI is written in Go and Beam in Go. 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 Beam?
Choose LocalAI if you want the larger community (49,179 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Beam if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.