FastSD CPU is an open-source desktop application that generates images with Stable Diffusion and FLUX models on ordinary CPUs and AI PCs — no discrete GPU required. With around 2,200 stars on GitHub and active development in 2026, it uses Latent Consistency Models and OpenVINO acceleration to make CPU image generation fast enough to be practical.
Most image generators assume a gaming GPU. FastSD CPU instead leans on distilled few-step models (LCM, SDXL Turbo, SDXS) and Intel OpenVINO to produce images in seconds on laptop CPUs. It offers three ways to work: a friendly Qt desktop GUI for interactive creation, a command-line interface for scripting, and an API mode for integrating generation into other apps.
FastSD CPU is a good fit for offline and privacy-sensitive setups: once the models are downloaded, generation happens entirely on your machine, which also makes it popular in classrooms and regions where GPU cloud access is impractical. Through OpenVINO it can take advantage of modern CPU instruction sets and the NPUs built into newer AI PCs, and its API mode lets tinkerers bolt local image generation onto chatbots and home-automation projects.
The GUI exposes the controls casual users expect — prompt, negative prompt, steps, guidance, seed, and batch size — alongside the upscaler, while the CLI exposes the same pipeline for automation. Model management is built in, so downloading and switching between supported checkpoints does not require editing configuration files by hand.
FastSD CPU is free and open source under the MIT license. There is no paid tier or hosted service.
Creators, students, and developers without a powerful GPU who still want fast, local text-to-image generation on their existing computer.