head to head · open source
Ollama vs Laminar
Ollama has 185,702 GitHub stars, 18,873 forks, 3,957 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Laminar has 3,471 stars, 257 forks, 116 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Ollama leads on adoption by 5,250% (185,702 vs 3,471 stars). Ollama is written in Go under MIT; Laminar is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. Ollama has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, Laminar 7%. Laminar 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 | Laminar | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 186K | ★ 3.5K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 19K | ⑂ 257 |
| 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 Laminar if
- You want the Laminar feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Laminar 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 Laminar
Laminar Laminar is an open source observability platform purpose built for AI agents. [x] Tracing. Docs [x] OpenTelemetry native powerful tracing SDK 1 line of code to automatically trace Vercel AI SDK, Browser Use, Stagehand, LangChain, OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, and more . [x] Signals. Docs [x] Describe any behavior of your agent that you want to track in plain English (e.g. "agent is stuck in a loop") [x] Laminar reads every agent run and pings you in Slack when it happens. [x] Evals. Docs [x] Unopinionated, extensible SDK and CLI for running evals locally or in CI/CD pipeline. [x] UI for visualizing evals…
read the full Laminar overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ollama or Laminar more popular?
Ollama has 185,702 GitHub stars and Laminar has 3,471. Ollama has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ollama and Laminar free?
Both are open source. Ollama is licensed under MIT and Laminar under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ollama and Laminar?
Ollama is written in Go and Laminar 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 Laminar?
Choose Ollama if you want the larger community (185,702 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Laminar if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.