head to head · open source
llama.cpp vs ome
llama.cpp has 128,581 GitHub stars, 23,334 forks, 2,464 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ome has 509 stars, 97 forks, 134 open issues and last shipped yesterday. llama.cpp leads on adoption by 25,161% (128,581 vs 509 stars). llama.cpp is written in C++ under MIT; ome is written in Go under Apache-2.0. llama.cpp has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, ome 19%. ome was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| llama.cpp | ome | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 129K | ★ 509 |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C++ | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 23K | ⑂ 97 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick llama.cpp if
- You weight community size — 129K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick ome if
- You want the ome feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and ome fits your workflow better
About llama.cpp
llama.cpp is a C/C++ library and set of command line tools for running large language models (LLMs) and vision language models (VLMs) locally. It enables inference without external dependencies, targeting diverse hardware including Apple Silicon, x86 CPUs, NVIDIA GPUs (via CUDA), AMD GPUs (via HIP), and other accelerators. The project lives in the ggml ecosystem, leveraging the ggml tensor computation library for low level operations and quantized model execution.
read the full llama.cpp overview →
About ome
OME (Open Model Engine) is an Apache 2.0 Kubernetes operator, written in Go, that manages model lifecycle, GPU scheduling, and LLM serving for platform teams running inference on Kubernetes.
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Frequently asked questions
Is llama.cpp or ome more popular?
llama.cpp has 128,581 GitHub stars and ome has 509. llama.cpp has the larger community by that measure.
Are llama.cpp and ome free?
Both are open source. llama.cpp is licensed under MIT and ome under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between llama.cpp and ome?
llama.cpp is written in C++ and ome in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, llama.cpp or ome?
Choose llama.cpp if you want the larger community (128,581 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose ome if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.