head to head · open source
Ollama vs LongMemory
Ollama has 181,161 GitHub stars, 17,917 forks, 3,957 open issues and last shipped yesterday. LongMemory has 4,502 stars, 504 forks, 19 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Ollama leads on adoption by 3,924% (181,161 vs 4,502 stars). Ollama is written in Go under MIT; LongMemory is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. Ollama has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, LongMemory 11%. Ollama 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 | LongMemory | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 181K | ★ 4.5K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 18K | ⑂ 504 |
| 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 LongMemory if
- You want the LongMemory 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 LongMemory 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 LongMemory
LongMemory is a local first, self hosted cognitive memory engine for LLM applications and autonomous agents that gives stateless models durable, temporal, governed recall, written in TypeScript under the Apache 2.0 licence and aimed at developers building agent hosts, automation tools, and RAG style pipelines.
read the full LongMemory overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ollama or LongMemory more popular?
Ollama has 181,161 GitHub stars and LongMemory has 4,502. Ollama has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ollama and LongMemory free?
Both are open source. Ollama is licensed under MIT and LongMemory under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ollama and LongMemory?
Ollama is written in Go and LongMemory 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 LongMemory?
Choose Ollama if you want the larger community (181,161 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose LongMemory if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.