head to head · open source
Ollama vs Langfuse
Ollama has 181,161 GitHub stars, 17,917 forks, 3,957 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Langfuse has 34,729 stars, 3,785 forks, 926 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Ollama leads on adoption by 422% (181,161 vs 34,729 stars). Ollama is written in Go under MIT; Langfuse is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence. Ollama has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, Langfuse 11%. Langfuse was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (llm), 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 | Langfuse | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 181K | ★ 35K |
| License | MIT | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 18K | ⑂ 3.8K |
| 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 Langfuse if
- You want the Langfuse feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Langfuse 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 Langfuse
Langfuse is an open source LLM engineering platform for building, monitoring, and improving AI powered applications. It lives in the LLMops ecosystem and provides tooling for the full development lifecycle—from prompt iteration and evaluation to observability and dataset management. Built with TypeScript and powered by ClickHouse, it enables teams to track LLM calls, user sessions, and internal logic like retrieval or agent actions in a unified interface.
read the full Langfuse overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ollama or Langfuse more popular?
Ollama has 181,161 GitHub stars and Langfuse has 34,729. Ollama has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ollama and Langfuse free?
Both are open source. Ollama is licensed under MIT, and Langfuse has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Ollama and Langfuse?
Ollama is written in Go and Langfuse 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 Langfuse?
Choose Ollama if you want the larger community (181,161 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Langfuse if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.