head to head · open source
one-api vs optillm
one-api has 36,932 GitHub stars, 6,867 forks, 1,036 open issues and last shipped 8 months ago. optillm has 4,280 stars, 388 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped yesterday. one-api leads on adoption by 763% (36,932 vs 4,280 stars). one-api is written in JavaScript under MIT; optillm is written in Python under Apache-2.0. one-api has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, optillm 9%. optillm was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (api-gateway), 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
| one-api | optillm | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 37K | ★ 4.3K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-01-09 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.9K | ⑂ 388 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick one-api if
- You weight community size — 37K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick optillm if
- You want the optillm 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 optillm fits your workflow better
About one-api
One API is a self hosted LLM API management and key redistribution system that exposes many model providers through the standard OpenAI API format, aimed at developers, teams and operators who want a single endpoint, a single key model and a single quota surface across providers.
read the full one-api overview →
About optillm
OptiLLM is a Python project that provides an optimizing inference proxy for large language models. It exposes an OpenAI API compatible endpoint and sits between an application and model providers, allowing callers to request reasoning oriented optimizations without changing model weights or adding training. The project lives in the developer tools and API development ecosystem, and its topics connect it to agents, agentic workflows, API gateways, chain of thought prompting, and generative AI inference.
read the full optillm overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is one-api or optillm more popular?
one-api has 36,932 GitHub stars and optillm has 4,280. one-api has the larger community by that measure.
Are one-api and optillm free?
Both are open source. one-api is licensed under MIT and optillm under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between one-api and optillm?
one-api is written in JavaScript and optillm 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, one-api or optillm?
Choose one-api if you want the larger community (36,932 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose optillm if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.