Side by side
Chainer vs fastai
Both stand on deep learning software. Which one you can start free with, which one lets you read the code, and what each costs once you pay.
Free plan APILinuxMac+2
Chainer offers flexible Python-based model development with dynamic computation and GPU support. Its maintenance-only status and platform guidance make project planning and migration considerations important.
Visit Chainer Free plan LinuxMacSelf-hosted+2
fastai offers a broad set of Python components for training models and can run locally or in Google Colab. Windows Jupyter users should account for the documented slowdown in computer vision tasks.
Visit fastaiThe facts
| Chainer | fastai | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | Not published | Not published |
| Runs on | API, Linux, Mac, Self-hosted, Windows | Linux, Mac, Self-hosted, Web, Windows |
| Lowest paid plan | Not published | Free or on request |
| Plans published | None | 1 |
| Maker | Not published | Not published |
| Website | chainer.org | fast.ai |
| On deep learning software | #10 of 35 | #6 of 35 |
Chainer: what it does well
- Free, open-source Python framework
- Define-by-run automatic differentiation
- Supports multiple neural-network architectures
- CUDA and multi-GPU computation
- Extensions for reinforcement learning and vision
What to know first
- Project is limited to maintenance work
- Windows and macOS operation not guaranteed
- CUDA requires separate CuPy installation
- Python 2 is unsupported
fastai: what it does well
- Quick start covers vision, text, recommendations, and tabular models.
- Supports GPU acceleration and distributed training.
- Can be used in Google Colab without installation.
- Works with other PyTorch-based libraries.
What to know first
- Jupyter on Windows can make computer vision tasks much slower.
- PyTorch is recommended before installing fastai.
Alternatives to Chainer Alternatives to fastai The whole list