promptfoo 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 | promptfoo | Weave |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Read-the-docs project | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 97 · Excellent | 83 · Excellent |
| Category | Self-Hosted AI | Self-Hosted AI |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | TypeScript | Python |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 1,024 MB | 1,024 MB |
| Deployment | bare-metal, binary, source | docker, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 25,409 | ★ 1,130 |
| First released | 2023 | 2023 |
| Replaces | LangSmith | LangSmith |
What are promptfoo and Weave?
promptfoo
promptfoo is a developer-friendly tool for testing and evaluating prompts, models, and RAG systems. It supports automated evaluations, comparisons, and security red-teaming with a local web viewer.
- Automated prompt evals
- Model comparison matrix
- Red-teaming and security tests
- Local web viewer
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
promptfoo vs Weave: key differences
Promptfoo is written in TypeScript, while Weave is built with Python. Licensing differs — MIT for promptfoo versus Apache-2.0 for Weave. Promptfoo has the considerably larger community, at 25,409 GitHub stars versus 1,130. Weave lists first-class Docker deployment; promptfoo does not.
Why pick each one
Choose promptfoo if…
- Simple YAML configs
- Red-teaming built in
- Runs fully locally
Watch out for
- CLI-centric workflow
- Node.js required
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 promptfoo or Weave better?
promptfoo is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler easy setup. Consider Weave if its specific feature set fits your needs better.
Are promptfoo and Weave free and open-source?
Yes. promptfoo is licensed under MIT and Weave under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run promptfoo and Weave with Docker?
promptfoo: check the project docs for container support. Weave: yes.