head to head · open source
Ollama vs Helicone
Ollama has 181,290 GitHub stars, 17,939 forks, 3,957 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Helicone has 6,165 stars, 672 forks, 156 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Ollama leads on adoption by 2,841% (181,290 vs 6,165 stars). Ollama is written in Go under MIT; Helicone is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. Ollama has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, Helicone 11%. Ollama was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | Helicone | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 181K | ★ 6.2K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 18K | ⑂ 672 |
| 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 Helicone if
- You want the Helicone feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Helicone 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 Helicone
Helicone is an open source AI gateway and LLM observability platform for AI engineers who need to monitor, evaluate, and experiment with applications built on large language models.
read the full Helicone overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ollama or Helicone more popular?
Ollama has 181,290 GitHub stars and Helicone has 6,165. Ollama has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ollama and Helicone free?
Both are open source. Ollama is licensed under MIT and Helicone under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ollama and Helicone?
Ollama is written in Go and Helicone in TypeScript. 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 Helicone?
Choose Ollama if you want the larger community (181,290 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Helicone if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.