head to head · open source
Ollama vs lancedb
Ollama has 185,702 GitHub stars, 18,873 forks, 3,957 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lancedb has 11,832 stars, 1,150 forks, 627 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Ollama leads on adoption by 1,469% (185,702 vs 11,832 stars). Ollama is written in Go under MIT; lancedb is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Ollama has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, lancedb 10%. lancedb 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 | lancedb | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 186K | ★ 12K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 19K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| 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 lancedb if
- You want the lancedb feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and lancedb 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 lancedb
The Multimodal AI Lakehouse How to Install ✦ Detailed Documentation ✦ Tutorials and Recipes ✦ Contributors The ultimate multimodal data platform for AI/ML applications. LanceDB is designed for fast, scalable, and production ready vector search. It is built on top of the Lance columnar format. You can store, index, and search over petabytes of multimodal data and vectors with ease. LanceDB is a central location where developers can build, train and analyze their AI workloads. Demo: Multimodal Search by Keyword, Vector or with SQL Star LanceDB to get updates! ⭐ Click here ⭐ to see how fast we're growing! Key…
read the full lancedb overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ollama or lancedb more popular?
Ollama has 185,702 GitHub stars and lancedb has 11,832. Ollama has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ollama and lancedb free?
Both are open source. Ollama is licensed under MIT and lancedb under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ollama and lancedb?
Ollama is written in Go and lancedb in Rust. 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 lancedb?
Choose Ollama if you want the larger community (185,702 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose lancedb if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.