Prompt flow vs Weave
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted self-hosted ai options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Prompt flow | Weave |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 78 · Good | 83 · Excellent |
| Category | Self-Hosted AI | Self-Hosted AI |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Python | Python |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 2,048 MB | 1,024 MB |
| Deployment | docker, source | docker, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 11,244 | ★ 1,130 |
| First released | 2023 | 2023 |
| Replaces | LangSmith, Vertex AI | LangSmith |
What are Prompt flow and Weave?
Prompt flow
Prompt flow is an open-source development toolkit from Microsoft for building, testing, and evaluating LLM-powered applications. It provides a visual flow editor, batch evaluation, and tooling to debug prompt pipelines locally.
- Visual flow authoring
- Batch evaluation runs
- Local debugging tools
- VS Code extension
Weave
Weave is a lightweight toolkit from Weights & Biases for logging, tracing and evaluating LLM application calls. The tracing server component can be self-hosted to keep AI evaluation data on your own infrastructure.
- LLM call tracing
- Evaluation framework
- Self-hostable server
- Python-native
Prompt flow vs Weave: key differences
Both projects are written in Python. Licensing differs — MIT for Prompt flow versus Apache-2.0 for Weave. Weave is the lighter option, starting around 1,024 MB of RAM against 2,048 MB for Prompt flow. Prompt flow has the considerably larger community, at 11,244 GitHub stars versus 1,130.
Why pick each one
Choose Prompt flow if…
- Released under the MIT license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Mature project with 11.2k GitHub stars
- Written in Python
Choose Weave if…
- Released under the Apache-2.0 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (1.1k GitHub stars)
- Written in Python
Frequently asked questions
Is Prompt flow or Weave better?
Neither is universally better. Prompt flow has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Prompt flow and Weave free and open-source?
Yes. Prompt flow is licensed under MIT and Weave under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Prompt flow and Weave with Docker?
Prompt flow: yes. Weave: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Prompt flow or Weave?
Weave has the smaller minimum footprint at 1,024 MB of RAM, compared to about 2,048 MB for Prompt flow. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.