head to head · open source

vllm vs kvcached

vllm has 92,723 GitHub stars, 22,693 forks, 7,953 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kvcached has 1,506 stars, 181 forks, 105 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. vllm leads on adoption by 6,057% (92,723 vs 1,506 stars). vllm is written in Python under Apache-2.0; kvcached is written in Python under Apache-2.0. vllm has attracted 24% as many forks as stars, kvcached 12%. vllm was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (llm, llm-serving), 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.

vllm ★ 93K kvcached ★ 1.5K category AI & Machine Learning

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Side by side

	vllm	kvcached
GitHub stars	★ 93K	★ 1.5K
License	Apache-2.0	Apache-2.0
Written in	Python	Python
Last push	2026-09-26	2026-09-25
Forks	⑂ 23K	⑂ 181
Self-hosting	Yes	Yes
Data ownership	Your server	Your server

pick vllm if

You weight community size — 93K stars and counting
You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
Your stack matches Python
You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance

full vllm profile →

pick kvcached if

You want the kvcached 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 kvcached fits your workflow better

full kvcached profile →

About vllm

vLLM is a high throughput, memory efficient Python library for LLM inference and serving, built for ML engineers and platform teams who need to run open weight models on their own hardware at production scale.

read the full vllm overview →

About kvcached

kvcached is an Apache 2.0 Python library that gives LLM serving engines a virtual memory style, elastic KV cache, letting several models share one GPU's memory instead of partitioning it rigidly — it is built for ML infrastructure and platform engineers who serve LLMs on shared or capacity constrained GPUs.

read the full kvcached overview →

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Frequently asked questions

Is vllm or kvcached more popular?

vllm has 92,723 GitHub stars and kvcached has 1,506. vllm has the larger community by that measure.

Are vllm and kvcached free?

Both are open source. vllm is licensed under Apache-2.0 and kvcached under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.

What is the difference between vllm and kvcached?

vllm is written in Python and kvcached 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, vllm or kvcached?

Choose vllm if you want the larger community (92,723 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose kvcached if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.