TextGen (text-generation-webui) review

TextGen, the project long known as text-generation-webui, is the toolbox for people who want control over how models run. The portable builds for Windows, Linux and macOS come with CUDA, Vulkan, ROCm or CPU-only options and run GGUF models after you unzip and double-click. A fuller install adds ExLlamaV3, Transformers and TensorRT-LLM backends, and you can switch backends and models without restarting. It exposes OpenAI and Anthropic-compatible endpoints, so other apps can use it as a drop-in local API, and models can call single-file Python tools or MCP servers. It is one of the few apps here that trains LoRAs on chat or raw text datasets, and it also attaches images, PDFs and Word files and generates images with diffusers models. For privacy, the project states it is 100% offline with zero telemetry, external resources or remote update requests. The cost is complexity: the interface and install options assume you know what a backend is.

Who it is for

Power users who want to switch between llama.cpp, ExLlamaV3 and Transformers backends or fine-tune their own LoRAs.

Price

Free and open source (AGPL-3.0).

A desktop app for local LLMs. Open source, no telemetry.
Quoted from the vendor pricing page on November 10, 2026.

Key features

• Backends: llama.cpp, ik_llama.cpp, Transformers, ExLlamaV3 and TensorRT-LLM
• OpenAI and Anthropic-compatible Chat, Completions and Messages endpoints
• Tool calling with single-file Python tools and MCP servers
• LoRA fine-tuning on chat or raw text datasets
• Vision, PDF and .docx attachments, and image generation

Strengths and weaknesses

• Strength: States 100% offline operation with zero telemetry or remote update requests
• Strength: Portable builds with CUDA, Vulkan, ROCm and CPU-only options
• Strength: Switch backends and models without restarting
• Weakness: Extra backends, training and image generation need a fuller install
• Weakness: More settings than beginner-focused apps
• Weakness: AGPL-3.0 license

Key facts

• License: AGPL-3.0
• Formerly: text-generation-webui
• GitHub stars: 47.7K
• Telemetry: None, per the project

Where it ranks

TextGen (text-generation-webui) is No. 8 in our Best Local LLM Apps verdict.