Practical overview
When it fits
Use Paddler when you need a self-managed inference serving layer that connects applications to LLM or VLM capacity across CPU or GPU infrastructure.
Who it is for
- Product teams that need to serve LLM inference or embeddings in their features.
- DevOps and LLMOps teams deploying and operating model inference.
- Organizations that want to run inference on infrastructure they manage.
Documented uses
- Serve tokens and embeddings to applications through a self-hosted inference service.
- Distribute model requests across agents and their inference slots.
- Add agents dynamically to integrate with autoscaling tools.
- Manage, monitor and test a Paddler setup through its web admin panel.
Requirements & limits
The project is open source under the Apache-2.0 license. The README describes a self-contained binary available through GitHub releases or a source build.
- The architecture has two deployable components: a balancer and agents.
- The inference engine is based on llama.cpp; agents use Paddler's own slot implementation with per-slot context and KV cache.
- The README lists request buffering, dynamic model swapping and observability metrics.
- The web admin panel is optional in the documented balancer command.
Check current requirements in the official documentation. Source-based guidance does not mean OpenViST has run or independently tested this project.
Install Paddler from a release or source
Make the Paddler binary available on your system.
Before you start
- For a source build: Rust and Node installed.
- For a CUDA source build: CUDA toolkit installed and the nvcc compiler available in PATH.
Steps
Obtain the latest release binary from the GitHub releases page, or clone the Paddler repository to build from source.
For a source build, from the repository root, run the hardware-specific build command: CPU:
make; CUDA: the command below; Metal: the command below; Vulkan: the command below.make cudamake metalmake vulkanUse the resulting binary at
target/release/paddlerfor CPU,target/cuda/release/paddlerfor CUDA,target/metal/release/paddlerfor Metal, ortarget/vulkan/release/paddlerfor Vulkan.Optionally move the binary to a directory on your PATH to make it available globally; the appropriate location depends on the operating system.
Expected outcome
A Paddler binary is available on the system. Run `paddler --help` to list available commands and options.
Guide limitations
- The source-build instructions list MSRV 1.95.0.
- Global binary installation is system-specific.
- CUDA builds require the CUDA toolkit and nvcc in PATH.
Compare options for Model inference and serving
These projects document a common task and share a project role. This is a source-based comparison, not an execution benchmark or a guarantee of interchangeability.
| Project | Documented purpose | Platform | Access and requirements |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paddler | Serve tokens and embeddings to applications through a self-hosted inference service. | Self-hosted, Server | The project is open source under the Apache-2.0 license. The README describes a self-contained binary available through GitHub releases or a source build. |
| Morphingdb | Import a libtorch model and create predictions from values in a PostgreSQL table. | Docker, Linux, Self-hosted, Server | The README documents a Docker image and a build-from-repository option, followed by connecting to PostgreSQL and enabling the pgdl extension. |
| Gateway — pyadav | Send chat-completion requests to a provider through a common server endpoint. | Server | The repository is public and identifies the project as Apache-2.0 licensed. README installation instructions include binaries, platform package managers and Docker. |
Sources & review
Source record details
- Source availability
- Active
- Sources checked
- 11 October 2026
- Original website title
- intentee/paddler · Official homepage title · retained in its source language

