5 Best Open-Source LLM Inference Engines in 2026 Deploying an LLM locally or on your own server requires an inference engine. In 2026, there are more options than ever — and they're not interchangeable. Here's a practical breakdown. What is an Inference Engine? An inference engine loads model weights, handles tokenization, manages GPU memory, and serves responses. The right choice can mean a 3x difference in throughput for the same hardware. 1. vLLM — Best for Production Throughput GitHub : vllm-project/vllm | ⭐ 40k+ vLLM introduced PagedAttention — a memory management technique that dramatically increases throughput by treating KV cache like virtual memory in an OS. It's the default choice for production API servers.…