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LocalAI

LocalAI is the open-source AI engine. Run any model - LLMs, vision, voice, image, video - on any hardware. No GPU required.

7.8 Open source48.8k
#2 in LLM Infrastructure of 47
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LocalAI homepage
localai.io · captured 2026-09-01

Our verdict

A usable project with some maintenance caveats. This assessment is derived from GitHub's own repository metrics on 2026-08-30, not from hands-on testing.

LocalAI is the open-source AI engine. Run any model - LLMs, vision, voice, image, video - on any hardware. No GPU required. The project is written primarily in Go, released under MIT, and has 48,758 stars and 4,398 forks on GitHub. 238 contributors have committed to it, and the most recent push was 2026-08-30. The latest tagged release is v4.9.0 (2026-08-20). Figures come from the GitHub API on 2026-08-30 and are refreshed daily; the score below weighs adoption, maintenance, release discipline, contributor breadth, licence clarity and issue hygiene.

Reviewed by AI Review Rating from GitHub API data How we score

RepositoryGitHub API, refreshed daily

48.8kStars
4.4kForks
295Watching
238Contributors
170Open issues
Licence
MIT
Language
Go
Last push
2026-08-30
View on GitHub

Releases

  1. v4.9.0 v4.9.0
  2. v4.8.2 v4.8.2
  3. v4.8.1 v4.8.1
  4. v4.8.0 v4.8.0
  5. v4.7.1 v4.7.1
  6. v4.7.0 v4.7.0

Pros and cons

Pros

Pricing

  • Free tierYes
  • LicenceMIT
  • Self-hostYes, source is public
  • Public price listNot published

LocalAI does not publish a web price list. For consumer apps that usually means pricing appears inside the product; for enterprise tools it means talking to sales. Why we do this

Visit localai.io

What users actually say

We link to discussions rather than reproducing them. Opinions belong to their authors.

User reviews

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LocalAI alternatives

🥇 Transformers logo Transformers 🤗 Transformers: the model-definition framework for state-of-the-art machine learning… 7.9 Free tier 🥈 GPT4Free logo GPT4Free The official gpt4free repository | various collection of powerful… 7.7 Free tier 🥉 Headroom logo Headroom Compress tool outputs, logs, files, and RAG chunks before… 7.5 Free tier vLLM logo vLLM A high-throughput and memory-efficient inference and serving engine for… 7.5 Free tier Ollama logo Ollama Get up and running with Kimi-K2.6, GLM-5.2, MiniMax, DeepSeek,… 7.3 Free tier Open WebUI logo Open WebUI User-friendly AI Interface (Supports Ollama, OpenAI API, …) 7.3 Free tier

Side by side

ToolOur scoreFrom Free tierBest for
LocalAI this page 7.8 - Yes
🥇Transformers 7.9 - Yes
🥈GPT4Free 7.7 - Yes
🥉Headroom 7.5 - Yes
vLLM 7.5 - Yes
Ollama 7.3 - Yes
Open WebUI 7.3 - Yes

Articles on LocalAI

All articles
Best GitHub Repos to Start a One-Person Business in 2026 Covers LocalAI Best GitHub Repos to Start a One-Person Business in 2026 Short answer: the repositories below are free, and each one removes a cost or creates a billable service for a… 4 min read
Best Open Source AI Tools You Can Self-Host in 2026 (And What They Replace) Covers LocalAI Best Open Source AI Tools You Can Self-Host in 2026 (And What They Replace) Short answer: the open-source AI stack is now good enough that self-hosting is a cost decision rather than a compromise.… 5 min read
Self-Hosting an LLM in 2026: A Small Team Needs 675 Tokens a Second, Nonstop, Before a $244.80 GPU Beats a $0.14 API Self-Hosting an LLM in 2026: A Small Team Needs 675 Tokens a Second, Nonstop, Before a $244.80 GPU Beats a $0.14 API A $244.80 a month RTX 4090 on Runpod Community Cloud only beats Together AI Llama 3 8B Instruct Lite above… 17 min read
Open Source Alternatives to Paid AI Tools in 2026: $560.50 a Month Off a Small Team’s Bill, and the Three Licences That Decide If You Can Open Source Alternatives to Paid AI Tools in 2026: $560.50 a Month Off a Small Team’s Bill, and the Three Licences That Decide If You Can A small team on Zapier, Pinecone, Algolia, Datadog, 5 ChatGPT seats and ElevenLabs pays $560.50 a month, $6,726 a year,… 14 min read

Questions

Is LocalAI free?

Yes. LocalAI advertises a free tier on its own site.

How much does LocalAI cost?

LocalAI does not publish a web price list. For consumer apps that usually means pricing appears inside the product; for enterprise tools it means talking to sales.

Is LocalAI open source?

Yes. LocalAI is a public repository released under MIT. You can self-host or inspect the source directly.

How is LocalAI scored here?

LocalAI scores 7.8 out of 10. That comes from a desk review of public evidence, which is capped at 8.5 out of 10: public pricing, documentation, maintenance signals and how much we could actually verify. Affiliate relationships are excluded from scoring entirely. The full rubric is published on our methodology page.

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