Question 1

SGLang or TextGen (text-generation-webui): which should a small business choose?

Accepted Answer

Choose SGLang if you want: fewer license conditions (Permissive vs Network copyleft (AGPL)) and simpler deploy (one container vs a multi-container stack). Choose TextGen (text-generation-webui) if you want: no GPU server needed. TextGen (text-generation-webui) publishes no official RAM figure, so we cannot compare hosting cost directly.

Question 2

Which is cheaper to self-host, SGLang or TextGen (text-generation-webui)?

Accepted Answer

SGLang: GPU server (not estimated). TextGen (text-generation-webui): not estimated (no official RAM figure). Our estimate is the cheapest Hetzner Cloud plan that meets each project's official RAM and vCPU figure; it covers the server only.

Question 3

How much hardware do SGLang and TextGen (text-generation-webui) need?

Accepted Answer

SGLang: not published. TextGen (text-generation-webui): not published. SGLang needs a GPU for practical use.

Question 4

What is the license difference between SGLang and TextGen (text-generation-webui)?

Accepted Answer

SGLang: Apache-2.0 (Permissive). Permissive. Internal and commercial use allowed. Models keep their own licenses. TextGen (text-generation-webui): AGPL-3.0 (Network copyleft (AGPL)). Free for internal and commercial use. If you modify TextGen and let users interact with it over a network, you must offer them the modified source under AGPL-3.0. Models have their own licenses. This is a summary, not legal advice.

Question 5

Is SGLang or TextGen (text-generation-webui) more actively maintained?

Accepted Answer

SGLang: Active, last commit Oct 31, 2026. TextGen (text-generation-webui): Active, last commit Aug 17, 2026. GitHub data refreshed Oct 31, 2026.

Question 6

Which is easier to deploy, SGLang or TextGen (text-generation-webui)?

Accepted Answer

SGLang installs via Docker (NVIDIA GPU) (single container); TextGen (text-generation-webui) via Docker Compose (built locally from the repo) (multi-container stack). SGLang lists 4 known gotchas and TextGen (text-generation-webui) lists 4; see each app page.

	SGLang	TextGen (text-generation-webui)
Category	Local model runtimes	Local model runtimes
What it is	Fast serving engine for LLMs and multimodal models on GPU servers, with an OpenAI-style API.	Local LLM app (formerly text-generation-webui) with a browser UI, OpenAI/Anthropic-compatible API and LoRA training.
License	Apache-2.0	AGPL-3.0
License type	Permissive	Network copyleft (AGPL)
License conditions	Permissive. Internal and commercial use allowed. Models keep their own licenses.	Free for internal and commercial use. If you modify TextGen and let users interact with it over a network, you must offer them the modified source under AGPL-3.0. Models have their own licenses.
Status	Active	Active
GitHub stars	38.3k	47.7k
Last commit	Oct 31, 2026	Aug 17, 2026
Latest release	v0.5.22	v4.9
Minimum hardware	Not published	Not published
Recommended hardware	Not published	Not published
RAM measured by us	Not tested yet	Not tested yet
GPU	Yes for the documented install path: Linux with a supported NVIDIA GPU and a CUDA 13-compatible driver. The project also documents AMD Instinct, Google TPU, Intel GPU and Xeon CPU, Ascend NPU and other platforms on separate hardware pages.	Optional. Docker variants exist for NVIDIA, AMD, Intel Arc (beta) and CPU-only inference; portable builds come in CUDA, Vulkan, ROCm and CPU-only versions.
Est. server cost	GPU server (not estimated)	Not estimated
Deploy method	Docker (NVIDIA GPU)	Docker Compose (built locally from the repo)
Known gotchas	4 listed	4 listed
Telemetry	Not documented	None (documented)
Calls home by default	Not documented	No (documented)
SSO (OIDC / SAML / LDAP)	Not documented	Not documented
Audit log	Not documented	Not documented
RBAC	Not documented	Not documented
Details	Full SGLang guide →	Full TextGen (text-generation-webui) guide →

SGLang vs TextGen (text-generation-webui)

Short answer