head to head · open source
Ollama vs LocalAI
Ollama has 181,161 GitHub stars, 17,917 forks, 3,957 open issues and last shipped yesterday. LocalAI has 49,144 stars, 4,455 forks, 201 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Ollama leads on adoption by 269% (181,161 vs 49,144 stars). Ollama is written in Go under MIT; LocalAI is written in Go under MIT. Ollama has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, LocalAI 9%. LocalAI was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (llama, 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 | LocalAI | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 181K | ★ 49K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 18K | ⑂ 4.5K |
| 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 LocalAI if
- You want the LocalAI feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and LocalAI 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 LocalAI
LocalAI is an open source AI runtime that enables running large language models (LLMs), vision, audio, image, and video models locally or on premises. It operates as a modular engine where each model type is backed by a dedicated, lightweight backend—such as llama.cpp, whisper.cpp, or stable diffusion—pulled only when needed. This composable architecture avoids bundling unnecessary dependencies, keeping the core minimal while supporting diverse modalities and hardware configurations.
read the full LocalAI overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ollama or LocalAI more popular?
Ollama has 181,161 GitHub stars and LocalAI has 49,144. Ollama has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ollama and LocalAI free?
Both are open source. Ollama is licensed under MIT and LocalAI under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ollama and LocalAI?
Ollama is written in Go and LocalAI in Go. 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 LocalAI?
Choose Ollama if you want the larger community (181,161 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose LocalAI if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.