vLLM
High-throughput inference engine for serving large language models efficiently.
Prompts, structured output and evals PyPI Apache-2.0
How vLLM is used
vLLM is a dependency in 2 of the 6,208 public GitHub projects set up for AI coding agents that we scanned, too few to describe it from them alone. Our scan also samples projects by dependency (Solana 2,661, Ethereum and EVM 1,496, 3D and games 2,818, agent frameworks and SDKs 10,983); counting those, it appears in 59 projects, and what it is used with below comes from all of them. Projects that use it most often also use Hugging Face Transformers (76.3%), OpenAI Python Library (66.1%), PyTorch (64.4%).
vLLM popularity over time
Gid Score 44: downloads 56, use in agent projects 43, GitHub stars n/a, downloads trend 45 (each 0-100). How it is calculated.
Often used with vLLM
| Hugging Face Transformers | 76.3% of vLLM projects · 61.5× more than average |
|---|---|
| OpenAI Python Library | 66.1% of vLLM projects · 16.7× more than average |
| PyTorch | 64.4% of vLLM projects · 42.5× more than average |
| Hugging Face Datasets | 64.4% of vLLM projects · 159.9× more than average |
| NumPy | 62.7% of vLLM projects · 10.8× more than average |
| Accelerate | 59.3% of vLLM projects · 230.2× more than average |
| Hugging Face Hub | 59.3% of vLLM projects · 64.6× more than average |
| Pydantic | 59.3% of vLLM projects · 6.9× more than average |
From all 59 projects in our scan that use vLLM, including the dependency samples.
How vLLM is funded
Open Collective: vLLM
| Received, last 12 months | $19,805 Oct 2025 – Sep 2026 |
|---|---|
| Estimated annual budget | $2,679 Open Collective's estimate |
| Balance | $170,720 |
| Raised since the start | $308,714 · $137,995 paid out |
| Typical month median, last 12 months | $196 · $182 over 24 months |
| Last 12 months vs the 12 before | +115% |
| Contributors, last 12 months | 7 |
Top company backers all time
| Sequoia | $100,000 since Jun 2024 |
|---|---|
| The House Fund | $20,000 since Oct 2025 |
| WorldSeek AI | $300 since May 2025 |
| Yotta Labs | $200 since Aug 2024 |
May 2024Sep 2026
Money by month. First money received in May 2024. The typical month is the median: one big one-off donation does not move it.
USD after payment processor fees, as Open Collective reports it; fiscal host Open Source Collective. Source
GitHub Sponsors
| @vllm-project | 18 current sponsors |
|---|
GitHub shows how many people and companies sponsor an account, not how much they pay.
Ways to fund vLLM
GitHub Sponsors Open Collective
As the maintainers list them in FUNDING.yml on GitHub. Checked Oct 20, 2026.
Install
| Package | pip install vllm |
|---|---|
| Main stacks | Python (59) |
| Example projects | FlagOpen/RoboBrain2.5, GAIR-NLP/DeepResearcher, TheAgentArk/Toucan, The-Swarm-Corporation/ClawSwarm, DeepAuto-AI/automl-agent |
Alternatives to vLLM
In our scan, none of the most used tools in Prompts, structured output and evals does the same job as vLLM: they are add-ons, companions or tools for a different task.
More in Prompts, structured output and evals: Ultracite tiktoken (Python) tokenizers LangSmith Langfuse (Python) GPT Tokenizer TokenLens @graphql-codegen/typescript-operations