head to head · open source
Ollama vs chitu
Ollama has 181,161 GitHub stars, 17,917 forks, 3,957 open issues and last shipped yesterday. chitu has 3,001 stars, 259 forks, 57 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Ollama leads on adoption by 5,937% (181,161 vs 3,001 stars). Ollama is written in Go under MIT; chitu is written in Python under Apache-2.0. Ollama has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, chitu 9%. 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 | chitu | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 181K | ★ 3.0K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 18K | ⑂ 259 |
| 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 chitu if
- You want the chitu 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 chitu 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 chitu
Chitu is an open source Python inference framework for large language models. It lives in the PyTorch GPU model serving ecosystem, with topics including deepseek, llm serving, model serving, and pytorch, and it is Apache 2.0 licensed. The project describes itself as a high performance engine focused on efficiency, flexibility, and availability for production deployment.
read the full chitu overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ollama or chitu more popular?
Ollama has 181,161 GitHub stars and chitu has 3,001. Ollama has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ollama and chitu free?
Both are open source. Ollama is licensed under MIT and chitu under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ollama and chitu?
Ollama is written in Go and chitu 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 chitu?
Choose Ollama if you want the larger community (181,161 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose chitu if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.