head to head · open source
Ollama vs Beam
Ollama has 181,161 GitHub stars, 17,917 forks, 3,957 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Beam has 1,780 stars, 165 forks, 21 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Ollama leads on adoption by 10,078% (181,161 vs 1,780 stars). Ollama is written in Go under MIT; Beam is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. Ollama has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, Beam 9%. 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 | Beam | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 181K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 18K | ⑂ 165 |
| 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 Beam if
- You want the Beam feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Beam 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 Beam
Beam is an open source runtime for serverless AI workloads, released under AGPL 3.0 and implemented in Go. It lives in the Python AI infrastructure ecosystem, where it gives developers a Pythonic interface for deploying and scaling GPU inference, sandboxes, and background jobs without managing infrastructure. The open source engine is Beta9, which powers the managed Beam cloud platform.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ollama or Beam more popular?
Ollama has 181,161 GitHub stars and Beam has 1,780. Ollama has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ollama and Beam free?
Both are open source. Ollama is licensed under MIT and Beam under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ollama and Beam?
Ollama is written in Go and Beam 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, Ollama or Beam?
Choose Ollama if you want the larger community (181,161 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Beam if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.