---
pipeline_tag: image-text-to-text
license: other
license_name: moondream-model-license-1.0
license_link: https://moondream.ai/licenses/model/1.0
tags:
- moondream
- vision
- image-text-to-text
- object-detection
---

# Moondream 3.1

Moondream 3.1 is a vision language model with a mixture-of-experts architecture (9B total parameters, 2B active). It delivers state-of-the-art visual reasoning and detection while staying fast and cheap to deploy. Skills include `query`, `detect`, `point`, and `caption`, all native and all returning structured output.

For the full story on what's new — including how we trained it and how it holds up on your own tasks — see the release notes.

[✨ Playground](https://moondream.ai/playground)   ·   [☁️ Cloud API](https://moondream.ai/p/cloud)   ·   [📝 Release notes](https://moondream.ai/blog/moondream-3-1-beyond-benchmarks)   ·   [📄 License](https://moondream.ai/licenses/model/1.0)

## Run locally with Photon

[Photon](https://moondream.ai/p/photon) is Moondream's high-performance inference engine. It runs the model locally on NVIDIA GPUs (Ampere or newer) and Apple Silicon Macs, with the same API as [Moondream Cloud](https://moondream.ai/p/cloud).

```bash
pip install moondream
```

```python
import moondream as md
from PIL import Image

# Runs locally via Photon. Weights download from Hugging Face on first use.
model = md.vl(local=True, model="moondream3.1-9B-A2B")

image = Image.open("photo.jpg")

# Caption
print(model.caption(image)["caption"])

# Visual question answering
print(model.query(image, "What's in this image?")["answer"])

# Open-vocabulary detection
for obj in model.detect(image, "person")["objects"]:
    print(obj)

# Pointing
for point in model.point(image, "person")["points"]:
    print(point)
```

No API key is required to run the base model locally. (You'll only need one to run finetunes or to call [Moondream Cloud](https://moondream.ai/p/cloud).) For supported hardware, streaming, finetunes, and production serving with Triton, see the [local inference guide](https://docs.moondream.ai/running-locally).

## Cloud API

Prefer a hosted endpoint? The same skills are available through [Moondream Cloud](https://moondream.ai/p/cloud) with a generous free tier. See the [quickstart](https://docs.moondream.ai/quickstart) to make your first call.

## License

Moondream 3.1 is released under the [Moondream Model License](https://moondream.ai/licenses/model/1.0).