head to head · open source
Ollama vs deep-searcher
Ollama has 181,290 GitHub stars, 17,939 forks, 3,957 open issues and last shipped yesterday. deep-searcher has 8,273 stars, 804 forks, 55 open issues and last shipped 10 months ago. Ollama leads on adoption by 2,091% (181,290 vs 8,273 stars). Ollama is written in Go under MIT; deep-searcher is written in Python under Apache-2.0. Ollama has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, deep-searcher 10%. Ollama was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (deepseek, llm), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Ollama | deep-searcher | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 181K | ★ 8.3K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2025-11-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 18K | ⑂ 804 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Ollama if
- You weight community size — 181K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick deep-searcher if
- You want the deep-searcher feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and deep-searcher fits your workflow better
About Ollama
Ollama is a Go based, MIT licensed runtime that downloads and runs open source large language models such as DeepSeek, Qwen, Gemma, GLM, MiniMax and gpt oss locally on a user's own machine, and it is aimed at developers and teams that want model inference without routing prompts through a hosted API.
read the full Ollama overview →
About deep-searcher
DeepSearcher is an open source deep research tool that combines large language models with vector databases to search, evaluate, and reason over private data, producing accurate answers and comprehensive reports. Written in Python and released under the Apache 2.0 license, it lives in the AI and machine learning ecosystem as a machine learning infrastructure project, built around agentic retrieval augmented generation and the Zilliz/Milvus vector search stack. The project has been on GitHub for two years, carries 8265 stars and 803 forks, and had its most recent push on 19 November 2025.
read the full deep-searcher overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ollama or deep-searcher more popular?
Ollama has 181,290 GitHub stars and deep-searcher has 8,273. Ollama has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ollama and deep-searcher free?
Both are open source. Ollama is licensed under MIT and deep-searcher under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ollama and deep-searcher?
Ollama is written in Go and deep-searcher in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Ollama or deep-searcher?
Choose Ollama if you want the larger community (181,290 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose deep-searcher if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.