head to head · open source
serviette vs Beam
serviette has 58,732 GitHub stars, 1,547 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Beam has 1,842 stars, 175 forks, 21 open issues and last shipped yesterday. serviette leads on adoption by 3,088% (58,732 vs 1,842 stars). serviette is written in Python under MIT; Beam is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. serviette has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, Beam 10%. Beam 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
| serviette | Beam | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 59K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 175 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick serviette if
- You weight community size — 59K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- 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 serviette
serviette Looking for llm app templates? All templates, cookbooks and examples are still available in full in the Pathway repository under examples/llm app . A no code, always up to date RAG server for any vector database — built on the Pathway Live Data Framework. Point serviette at a folder of documents, pick a vector database and an embedder in one YAML file, and run two commands: you get a chat and a REST API that answer from those documents and cite their sources. From then on, any change to the documents — an edit, a new file, a deletion — is reflected in the answers within seconds. serviette runs on…
read the full serviette 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 serviette or Beam more popular?
serviette has 58,732 GitHub stars and Beam has 1,842. serviette has the larger community by that measure.
Are serviette and Beam free?
Both are open source. serviette is licensed under MIT and Beam under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between serviette and Beam?
serviette is written in Python 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, serviette or Beam?
Choose serviette if you want the larger community (58,732 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Beam if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.