head to head · open source
Ollama vs cognee
Ollama has 185,702 GitHub stars, 18,873 forks, 3,957 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cognee has 33,012 stars, 3,448 forks, 495 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Ollama leads on adoption by 463% (185,702 vs 33,012 stars). Ollama is written in Go under MIT; cognee is written in Python under Apache-2.0. Ollama has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, cognee 10%. 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 | cognee | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 186K | ★ 33K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 19K | ⑂ 3.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Ollama if
- You weight community size — 186K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick cognee if
- You want the cognee 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 cognee fits your workflow better
About Ollama
Ollama Start building with open models. Download macOS or download manually Windows or download manually Linux Manual install instructions Docker The official Ollama Docker image ollama/ollama is available on Docker Hub. Libraries ollama python ollama js Community Discord 𝕏 (Twitter) Reddit Get started You'll be prompted to run a model or connect Ollama to your existing agents or applications such as Claude Code , OpenClaw , OpenCode , Codex , Copilot , and more. Coding To launch a specific integration: Supported integrations include Claude Code, Codex, Copilot CLI, DeepSeek Harness, Droid, and OpenCode. AI…
read the full Ollama overview →
About cognee
Cognee The Open Source AI Memory Platform for Agents Demo . Docs . Learn More · Join Discord · Join r/AIMemory . Community Plugins & Add ons Cognee is the open source AI memory platform that gives AI agents persistent long term memory across sessions. Ingest data in any format, build a self hosted knowledge graph, and let every agent recall, connect, and act with full context 🌐 This README is also available in: Deutsch Español Français 日本語 한국어 Português Русский 中文 📄 Read the research paper: Optimizing the Interface Between Knowledge Graphs and LLMs for Complex Reasoning — Markovic et al., 2025 When to use…
read the full cognee overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ollama or cognee more popular?
Ollama has 185,702 GitHub stars and cognee has 33,012. Ollama has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ollama and cognee free?
Both are open source. Ollama is licensed under MIT and cognee under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ollama and cognee?
Ollama is written in Go and cognee 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 cognee?
Choose Ollama if you want the larger community (185,702 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose cognee if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.