head to head · open source
Ollama vs claude-context
Ollama has 181,161 GitHub stars, 17,917 forks, 3,957 open issues and last shipped yesterday. claude-context has 12,537 stars, 923 forks, 146 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Ollama leads on adoption by 1,345% (181,161 vs 12,537 stars). Ollama is written in Go under MIT; claude-context is written in TypeScript under MIT. Ollama has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, claude-context 7%. Ollama 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
| Ollama | claude-context | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 181K | ★ 13K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-07-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 18K | ⑂ 923 |
| 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 claude-context if
- You want the claude-context feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and claude-context 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 claude-context
Claude Context is an open source Model Context Protocol (MCP) plugin that adds semantic code search to Claude Code and other AI coding agents. It is written in TypeScript, licensed under MIT, and published to npm as @zilliz/claude context core and @zilliz/claude context mcp . The project lives in the AI coding agent ecosystem, where it plugs into MCP compatible clients such as Claude Code, OpenAI Codex CLI, Cursor, and Gemini CLI. A companion VS Code extension is distributed through the Visual Studio Marketplace as zilliz.semanticcodesearch .
read the full claude-context overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ollama or claude-context more popular?
Ollama has 181,161 GitHub stars and claude-context has 12,537. Ollama has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ollama and claude-context free?
Both are open source. Ollama is licensed under MIT and claude-context under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ollama and claude-context?
Ollama is written in Go and claude-context 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 claude-context?
Choose Ollama if you want the larger community (181,161 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose claude-context if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.