Installation#

Xinference can be installed with pip on Linux, Windows, and macOS. To run models using Xinference, you will need to install the backend corresponding to the type of model you intend to serve.

If you aim to serve all supported models, you can install all the necessary dependencies with a single command:

pip install "xinference[all]"

Several usage scenarios require special attention.

GGUF format with llama.cpp engine

In this situation, it’s advised to install its dependencies manually based on your hardware specifications to enable acceleration. For more details, see the Llama.cpp Backend section.

AWQ or GPTQ format with transformers engine

This section is added in v1.6.0.

This is because the dependencies at this stage require special options and are difficult to install. Please run command below in advance

pip install "xinference[transformers_quantization]" --no-build-isolation

Some dependencies like transformers might be downgraded, you can run pip install "xinference[all]" afterwards.

If you want to install only the necessary backends, here’s a breakdown of how to do it.

Transformers Backend#

PyTorch (transformers) supports the inference of most state-of-art models. It is the default backend for models in PyTorch format:

pip install "xinference[transformers]"

vLLM Backend#

vLLM is a fast and easy-to-use library for LLM inference and serving. Xinference will choose vLLM as the backend to achieve better throughput when the following conditions are met:

  • The model format is pytorch, gptq or awq.

  • When the model format is pytorch, the quantization is none.

  • When the model format is awq, the quantization is Int4.

  • When the model format is gptq, the quantization is Int3, Int4 or Int8.

  • The system is Linux and has at least one CUDA device

  • The model family (for custom models) / model name (for builtin models) is within the list of models supported by vLLM

Currently, supported models include:

  • llama-2, llama-3, llama-3.1, llama-3.2-vision, llama-2-chat, llama-3-instruct, llama-3.1-instruct, llama-3.3-instruct

  • mistral-v0.1, mistral-instruct-v0.1, mistral-instruct-v0.2, mistral-instruct-v0.3, mistral-nemo-instruct, mistral-large-instruct

  • codestral-v0.1

  • Yi, Yi-1.5, Yi-chat, Yi-1.5-chat, Yi-1.5-chat-16k

  • code-llama, code-llama-python, code-llama-instruct

  • deepseek, deepseek-coder, deepseek-chat, deepseek-coder-instruct, deepseek-r1-distill-qwen, deepseek-v2-chat, deepseek-v2-chat-0628, deepseek-v2.5, deepseek-v3, deepseek-v3-0324, deepseek-r1, deepseek-r1-0528, deepseek-prover-v2, deepseek-r1-0528-qwen3, deepseek-r1-distill-llama

  • yi-coder, yi-coder-chat

  • codeqwen1.5, codeqwen1.5-chat

  • qwen2.5, qwen2.5-coder, qwen2.5-instruct, qwen2.5-coder-instruct, qwen2.5-instruct-1m

  • baichuan-2-chat

  • internlm2-chat

  • internlm2.5-chat, internlm2.5-chat-1m

  • qwen-chat

  • mixtral-instruct-v0.1, mixtral-8x22B-instruct-v0.1

  • chatglm3, chatglm3-32k, chatglm3-128k

  • glm4-chat, glm4-chat-1m, glm4-0414

  • codegeex4

  • qwen1.5-chat, qwen1.5-moe-chat

  • qwen2-instruct, qwen2-moe-instruct

  • XiYanSQL-QwenCoder-2504

  • QwQ-32B-Preview, QwQ-32B

  • marco-o1

  • fin-r1

  • seallms-v3

  • skywork-or1-preview, skywork-or1

  • HuatuoGPT-o1-Qwen2.5, HuatuoGPT-o1-LLaMA-3.1

  • DianJin-R1

  • gemma-it, gemma-2-it, gemma-3-1b-it

  • orion-chat, orion-chat-rag

  • c4ai-command-r-v01

  • minicpm3-4b

  • internlm3-instruct

  • moonlight-16b-a3b-instruct

  • qwen3

To install Xinference and vLLM:

pip install "xinference[vllm]"

# FlashInfer is optional but required for specific functionalities such as sliding window attention with Gemma 2.
# For CUDA 12.4 & torch 2.4 to support sliding window attention for gemma 2 and llama 3.1 style rope
pip install flashinfer -i https://flashinfer.ai/whl/cu124/torch2.4
# For other CUDA & torch versions, please check https://docs.flashinfer.ai/installation.html

Llama.cpp Backend#

Xinference supports models in gguf format via xllamacpp. xllamacpp is developed by Xinference team, and is the sole backend for llama.cpp since v1.6.0.

Warning

Since Xinference v1.5.0, llama-cpp-python is deprecated. Since Xinference v1.6.0, llama-cpp-python has been removed.

Initial setup:

pip install xinference

Installation instructions for xllamacpp:

  • CPU or Mac Metal:

    pip install -U xllamacpp

  • CUDA:

    pip install xllamacpp --force-reinstall --index-url https://xorbitsai.github.io/xllamacpp/whl/cu124

  • HIP:

    pip install xllamacpp --force-reinstall --index-url https://xorbitsai.github.io/xllamacpp/whl/rocm-6.0.2

SGLang Backend#

SGLang has a high-performance inference runtime with RadixAttention. It significantly accelerates the execution of complex LLM programs by automatic KV cache reuse across multiple calls. And it also supports other common techniques like continuous batching and tensor parallelism.

Initial setup:

pip install "xinference[sglang]"

# For CUDA 12.4 & torch 2.4 to support sliding window attention for gemma 2 and llama 3.1 style rope
pip install flashinfer -i https://flashinfer.ai/whl/cu124/torch2.4
# For other CUDA & torch versions, please check https://docs.flashinfer.ai/installation.html

MLX Backend#

MLX-lm is designed for Apple silicon users to run LLM efficiently.

Initial setup:

pip install "xinference[mlx]"

Other Platforms#