---
title: API Providers
description: Ecosystem of providers for swapping implementations across the same API
sidebar_label: Overview
sidebar_position: 1
---

# API Providers

The goal of Llama Stack is to build an ecosystem where users can easily swap out different implementations for the same API. Examples for these include:
- LLM inference providers (e.g., Meta Reference, Ollama, Fireworks, Together, AWS Bedrock, Groq, Cerebras, SambaNova, vLLM, OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, WatsonX, etc.),
- Vector databases (e.g., FAISS, SQLite-Vec, ChromaDB, Weaviate, Qdrant, Milvus, PGVector, etc.),
- Safety providers (e.g., Meta's Llama Guard, Prompt Guard, Code Scanner, AWS Bedrock Guardrails, etc.),
- Tool Runtime providers (e.g., RAG Runtime, Brave Search, etc.)

Providers come in two flavors:
- **Remote**: the provider runs as a separate service external to the Llama Stack codebase. Llama Stack contains a small amount of adapter code.
- **Inline**: the provider is fully specified and implemented within the Llama Stack codebase. It may be a simple wrapper around an existing library, or a full fledged implementation within Llama Stack.

Importantly, Llama Stack always strives to provide at least one fully inline provider for each API so you can iterate on a fully featured environment locally.

## Provider Categories

- **[External Providers](external/index.mdx)** - Guide for building and using external providers
- **[OpenAI Compatibility](../api-openai/index.mdx)** - OpenAI API compatibility layer
- **[Inference](inference/index.mdx)** - LLM and embedding model providers
- **[Agents](agents/index.mdx)** - Agentic system providers
- **[DatasetIO](datasetio/index.mdx)** - Dataset and data loader providers
- **[Safety](safety/index.mdx)** - Content moderation and safety providers
- **[Vector IO](vector_io/index.mdx)** - Vector database providers
- **[Tool Runtime](tool_runtime/index.mdx)** - Tool and protocol providers
- **[Files](files/index.mdx)** - File system and storage providers

## API Documentation

For comprehensive API documentation and reference:

- **[API Reference](../api/index.mdx)** - Complete API documentation
- **[Experimental APIs](../api-experimental/index.mdx)** - APIs in development
- **[Deprecated APIs](../api-deprecated/index.mdx)** - Legacy APIs being phased out
- **[OpenAI Compatibility](../api-openai/index.mdx)** - OpenAI API compatibility guide

## Additional Provider Information

- **[OpenAI Implementation Guide](./openai.mdx)** - Code examples and implementation details for OpenAI APIs
- **[OpenAI-Compatible Responses Limitations](./openai_responses_limitations.mdx)** - Known limitations of the Responses API in Llama Stack
