Apple

runtime

proprietary(Apple system framework, closed)

conversion-tooling

coremltools(BSD-3-Clause, OSI, open)

model-format

.mlmodel/.mlpackage(documented)

hardware

Apple-silicon-only(Neural Engine)

The inference runtime itself is a closed Apple framework; only coremltools (model conversion) is open BSD-3. Headline (the runtime) is closed; scored closed with open-tooling note.

• https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coreml recorded 2026-06-04

  Core ML is Apple's proprietary on-device ML inference framework; runtime closed, runs models on Apple hardware