head to head · open source
LocalAI vs dstack
LocalAI has 50,187 GitHub stars, 4,574 forks, 201 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dstack has 2,303 stars, 272 forks, 68 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. LocalAI leads on adoption by 2,079% (50,187 vs 2,303 stars). LocalAI is written in Go under MIT; dstack is written in Python under MPL-2.0. LocalAI has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, dstack 12%. 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 | dstack | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 2.3K |
| License | MIT | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.6K | ⑂ 272 |
| 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 dstack if
- You want the dstack feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and dstack 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 dstack
dstack is a unified control plane for GPU provisioning and orchestration that works with any GPU cloud, Kubernetes, or on prem clusters. It streamlines development, training, and inference, and is compatible with any hardware, open source tools, and frameworks. Accelerators dstack supports NVIDIA , AMD , Google TPU , and Tenstorrent accelerators out of the box. Latest news ✨ [2026/08] dstack 0.21.0: Pydantic v2, Gateway replicas [2026/07] dstack 0.20.29: Presets — agent driven inference optimization (experimental) [2026/07] dstack 0.20.27: Slurm backend [2026/05] dstack 0.20.21: Kubernetes multiple clusters…
read the full dstack overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is LocalAI or dstack more popular?
LocalAI has 50,187 GitHub stars and dstack has 2,303. LocalAI has the larger community by that measure.
Are LocalAI and dstack free?
Both are open source. LocalAI is licensed under MIT and dstack under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between LocalAI and dstack?
LocalAI is written in Go and dstack 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 dstack?
Choose LocalAI if you want the larger community (50,187 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose dstack if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.