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LMDeploy vs Text Generation Inference

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted local llm runners options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

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LM LMDeploy Toolkit for compressing and serving large language models VS TE Text Generation Inference Archived Hugging Face toolkit for production LLM serving
FeatureLMDeployText Generation Inference
Deploy effortUnder-an-hour setupUnder-an-hour setup
Health score92 · Excellent15 · At risk
StatusActively maintainedArchived
CategoryLocal LLM RunnersLocal LLM Runners
LicenseApache-2.0Apache-2.0
LanguagePythonPython
Setup difficultyHardHard
Min. RAM16,384 MB16,384 MB
Deploymentdocker, sourcedocker, kubernetes
GitHub stars★ 8,092★ 10,885
First released20232022
ReplacesOpenAI API, Hugging Face Inference EndpointsOpenAI API

What are LMDeploy and Text Generation Inference?

LMDeploy

LMDeploy is an inference and serving toolkit from the OpenMMLab ecosystem for deploying large language models efficiently. It offers quantization, a high-throughput serving engine, and an OpenAI-compatible API.

  • High-throughput inference engine
  • Weight quantization support
  • OpenAI-compatible serving
  • Multi-GPU deployment

Text Generation Inference

Text Generation Inference is Hugging Face's production-grade toolkit for deploying and serving large language models. It offers optimized transformers code, continuous batching, and an OpenAI-compatible API.

  • Production LLM serving
  • Continuous batching
  • Tensor parallelism
  • OpenAI-compatible endpoint

LMDeploy vs Text Generation Inference: key differences

The biggest difference is maintenance: Text Generation Inference's repository is archived and no longer developed, while LMDeploy is actively maintained. Both projects are written in Python.

Why pick each one

Choose LMDeploy if…

  • Released under the Apache-2.0 license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Mature project with 8.1k GitHub stars
  • Written in Python
LMDeploy details

Choose Text Generation Inference if…

  • Released under the Apache-2.0 license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Kubernetes-ready with Helm charts available
  • Mature project with 10.9k GitHub stars
Text Generation Inference details

Frequently asked questions

Is LMDeploy or Text Generation Inference better?

Neither is universally better. Text Generation Inference has the larger community; both share a hard setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are LMDeploy and Text Generation Inference free and open-source?

Yes. LMDeploy is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Text Generation Inference under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run LMDeploy and Text Generation Inference with Docker?

LMDeploy: yes. Text Generation Inference: yes.

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