The best Model serving & inference
Every option ranked — open-source, self-hostable, and commercial — by our transparent Sovereignty Score, with honest trade-offs so you choose what fits you, not us.
Once you have a model, something has to run it and answer requests. Serverless platforms rent the GPU by the second; the open engines let you own the endpoint.
L3Infrastructure — layer 3 of the AI stack- 1
vLLM
Top pickOpen sourceThe standard open inference engine — the thing under most serving platforms.
Free and open source. You pay only for the GPUs you rent or own. · in our Modal comparison →
What is vLLM? →95sovereignty - 2
Ollama
Open sourceOne command to a running model. The easiest way to stop paying per token.
Free. Runs on hardware you already have. · in our Replicate comparison →
What is Ollama? →95sovereignty - 3
LocalAI
Open sourceA drop-in OpenAI replacement for chat, embeddings, images and audio.
Free. No account, no telemetry, no usage cap. · in our Replicate comparison →
What is LocalAI? →94sovereignty - 4
SGLang
Open sourceStructured generation and prefix caching — the fast one for complex prompts.
Free and unlimited; hardware costs are yours. · in our Replicate comparison →
What is SGLang? →91sovereignty - 5
BentoML
Open sourcePackage any model as a container and deploy it wherever you like.
Free and open source. BentoCloud is an optional paid hosted tier. · in our Modal comparison →
What is BentoML? →90sovereignty - 6
Hugging Face TGI
Open sourceText Generation Inference — the production-hardened Rust serving stack.
Free to self-host. Hugging Face sells a managed version if you want one. · in our Replicate comparison →
What is Hugging Face TGI? →90sovereignty - 7
Ray Serve
Open sourceMulti-node, multi-model serving for when one GPU is not the problem.
Free and open source. Anyscale sells a managed Ray platform. · in our Modal comparison →
What is Ray Serve? →89sovereignty - 8
RunPod Serverless
CommercialPartnerScale-to-zero like Modal, at close to raw GPU rental prices.
Per-second billing with scale-to-zero. H100 around $1.99/hr; no commitment. Rates observed 2026-07-30. · in our Modal comparison →
What is RunPod Serverless? →56sovereignty
Run these yourself
What each one actually needs — real RAM, honest running cost, and the setup time nobody quotes.
- Self-hosting vLLM 24 GB VRAM minimum for useful production serving
- Self-hosting Ollama 8 GB VRAM for a 7B model at usable speed; 24 GB for 30B-class
- Self-hosting LocalAI 8 GB RAM for CPU inference; 8 GB VRAM for anything comfortable
- Self-hosting SGLang 24 GB VRAM for useful production serving
- Self-hosting BentoML 4 GB plus model memory
Replacing a specific tool?
Head-to-head comparisons for each popular model serving & inference product.
Straight head-to-heads
Two model serving & inference tools, side by side — verified facts and a plain verdict.