AI · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to FastVLM

Lightweight open-source vision models for Apple devices

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

1. 1
   Ferret▲193

   Refer and ground anything anywhere at any granularity

   2024 · arxiv.org · its alternatives →

2. 2
   DeepSeek-VL2▲503

   MoE vision-language, now easier to access

   2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

3. 3
   InternVL3▲135

   Open MLLMs excelling in vision, reasoning & long context

   2025 · its alternatives →

4. 4
   SmolVLM2▲206

   Smallest Video LM Ever from HuggingFace

   2025 · huggingface.co · its alternatives →

5. 5
   Ollama v0.19▲410

   Massive local model speedup on Apple Silicon with MLX

   Apr 2026 · ollama.com · its alternatives →

6. 6
   Molmo 2▲98

   SOTA video understanding, pointing, and tracking VLM

   Dec 2025 · allenai.org · its alternatives →

7. 7
   Apple MGIE▲177

   AI image tool that lets you make edits by describing them

   2024 · huggingface.co · its alternatives →

8. 8
   MiniCPM-V 4.6▲98

   Ultra-efficient 1.3B vision-language model for mobile

   May 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

9. 9
   Run TRELLIS.2 Image-to-3D generation natively on Apple Silicon▲202

   I ported Microsoft's TRELLIS.2 (4B parameter image-to-3D model) to run on Apple Silicon via PyTorch MPS. The original requires CUDA with flash_attn, nvdiffrast, and custom sparse convolution kernels: none of which work on Mac. I replaced the CUDA-specific ops with pure-PyTorch alternatives: a gather-scatter sparse 3D convolution, SDPA attention for sparse transformers, and a Python-based mesh extraction replacing CUDA hashmap operations. Total changes are a few hundred lines across 9 files. Generates ~400K vertex meshes from single photos in about 3.5 minutes on M4 Pro (24GB). Not as fast as…

   Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

10. 10
    DeepSeek-OCR▲350

    Advanced visual-text compression technology

    2025 · huggingface.co · its alternatives →

11. 11
    SmolVLA▲139

    Powerful robotics VLA that runs on consumer hardware

    2025 · huggingface.co · its alternatives →

12. 12
    VWFNDR™ + MBL▲87

    Take raw photos with proof they're real, not AI

    May 2026 · vwfndr.camera · its alternatives →

13. 13
    Cord▲170

    Automating data annotation for computer vision

    2021 · encord.com · its alternatives →

14. 14
    MiniCPM-V 4.5▲93

    GPT-4o level vision model on the phone

    2025 · huggingface.co · its alternatives →

15. 15BV
    Benchmarking VLMs vs. Traditional OCR▲146

    Vision models have been gaining popularity as a replacement for traditional OCR. Especially with Gemini 2.0 becoming cost competitive with the cloud platforms. We've been continuously evaluating different models since we released the Zerox package last year (https://github.com/getomni-ai/zerox). And we wanted to put some numbers behind it. So we’re open sourcing our internal OCR benchmark + evaluation datasets. Full writeup + data explorer here: https://getomni.ai/ocr-benchmark Github: https://github.com/getomni-ai/benchmark Huggingface:…

    2025 · getomni.ai · its alternatives →

16. 16
    Apple MLX▲138

    An array framework for machine learning on Apple silicon

    2023 · pypi.org · its alternatives →

17. 17
    Viv▲123

    Intelligent AI platform from the makers of Siri (prelaunch)

    2015 · its alternatives →

18. 18
    Depthforge▲94

    Immersive 3D image generation for Apple Vision Pro

    2024 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

19. 19
    We made our own inference engine for Apple Silicon▲186

    We wrote our inference engine on Rust, it is faster than llama cpp in all of the use cases. Your feedback is very welcomed. Written from scratch with idea that you can add support of any kernel and platform.

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

20. 20
    Real-Time YOLO Object Detection in Elixir: Fast, Simple, Extensible▲96

    A library for object detection and seamless YOLO model integration in Elixir - poeticoding/yolo_elixir

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

21. 21
    Open-source Face Recognition on Raspberry Pi 3/4▲62

    Open-Source AI Camera Skills Platform, AI NVR & CCTV Surveillance. Local VLM video analysis with Qwen, DeepSeek, SmolVLM, LLaVA, YOLO26. LLM-powered agentic security camera agent — watches, understands, remembers & guards your home via Telegram, Discord or Slack. Pluggable AI skills. OpenAI, Google,

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

22. 22
    LLaVaVision: An AI "Be My Eyes"-like web app with a llama.cpp backend▲154

    A simple mobile web app inspired by Fuzzy-Search/realtime-bakllava that uses llama.cpp server backend with multimodal mode to describe and narrate what the phone camera sees. I built this thing in a few hours using a single ChatGPT thread to generate most things for me and iterate on this project. Here's the workflow: https://chat.openai.com/share/ea84ec69-5617-45e8-8772-ac2dcf...

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

23. 23
    Meta Perception Encoder▲122

    Vision encoder setting new standards in image & video tasks

    2025 · ai.meta.com · its alternatives →

24. 24
    Mirowl▲96

    Search all your screenshots via a local OCR-powered AI

    Jun 2026 · mirowl.com · its alternatives →

Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →