head to head · open source
Ollama vs dstack
Ollama has 181,161 GitHub stars, 17,917 forks, 3,957 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dstack has 2,252 stars, 262 forks, 68 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Ollama leads on adoption by 7,944% (181,161 vs 2,252 stars). Ollama is written in Go under MIT; dstack is written in Python under MPL-2.0. Ollama has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, dstack 12%. Ollama was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (llms), 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 | dstack | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 181K | ★ 2.3K |
| License | MIT | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 18K | ⑂ 262 |
| 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 dstack if
- You want the dstack feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and dstack 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 dstack
dstack is an open source Python project in the AI and machine learning infrastructure ecosystem. It is a unified control plane for GPU provisioning and orchestration that works with GPU clouds, Kubernetes, and on prem clusters. The project supports NVIDIA, AMD, Google TPU, and Tenstorrent accelerators, and it is compatible with open source tools and frameworks.
read the full dstack overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ollama or dstack more popular?
Ollama has 181,161 GitHub stars and dstack has 2,252. Ollama has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ollama and dstack free?
Both are open source. Ollama is licensed under MIT and dstack under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ollama and dstack?
Ollama is written in Go and dstack 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 dstack?
Choose Ollama if you want the larger community (181,161 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose dstack if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.