head to head · open source
LocalAI vs Beam
LocalAI has 50,208 GitHub stars, 4,577 forks, 201 open issues and last shipped today. Beam has 1,844 stars, 176 forks, 21 open issues and last shipped yesterday. LocalAI leads on adoption by 2,623% (50,208 vs 1,844 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 10%. 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 | ★ 50K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-05 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.6K | ⑂ 176 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick LocalAI if
- You weight community size — 50K 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
Deutsch Español français 日本語 한국어 Português Русский 中文 LocalAI is the open source AI engine. Run any model LLMs, vision, voice, image, video on any hardware. No GPU required. A small core, not a bundle. Each backend wraps a best in class engine (llama.cpp, vLLM, whisper.cpp, stable diffusion, MLX...) in its own image, pulled only when a model needs it. You install nothing you don't use. Composable by design : backends are separate and pulled on demand, so you install only what your model needs Open and extensible : load any model, or build your own backend in any language against an open interface Drop in API…
read the full LocalAI overview →
About Beam
Run AI Workloads at Scale Beam is a fast, open source runtime for serverless AI workloads. It gives you a Pythonic interface to deploy and scale AI applications with zero infrastructure overhead. ✨ Features Fast Cold Starts : Launch containers in under a second using a custom container runtime, scheduler, and embedded caching Parallelization and Concurrency : Fan out workloads to 100s of containers First Class Developer Experience : Hot reloading, webhooks, and scheduled jobs Scale to Zero : Workloads are serverless by default Volume Storage : Mount distributed storage volumes GPU Support : Run on our cloud…
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Frequently asked questions
Is LocalAI or Beam more popular?
LocalAI has 50,208 GitHub stars and Beam has 1,844. 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 (50,208 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Beam if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.