head to head · open source
Ollama vs Olares
Ollama has 181,161 GitHub stars, 17,917 forks, 3,957 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Olares has 5,276 stars, 327 forks, 155 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Ollama leads on adoption by 3,334% (181,161 vs 5,276 stars). Ollama is written in Go under MIT; Olares is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. Ollama has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, Olares 6%. Ollama 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 | Olares | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 181K | ★ 5.3K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 18K | ⑂ 327 |
| 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 Olares if
- You want the Olares feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Olares 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 Olares
Olares is an open source personal cloud operating system built to run AI agents and large language models on hardware you own. It is written in Go and released under the AGPL 3.0 license, and it sits in the cloud native and self hosted corner of the machine learning infrastructure ecosystem. The project describes itself as an operating system you operate in plain language, powered by Kubernetes, turning a machine or a set of machines into a self hosted AI platform reachable from any browser.
read the full Olares overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ollama or Olares more popular?
Ollama has 181,161 GitHub stars and Olares has 5,276. Ollama has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ollama and Olares free?
Both are open source. Ollama is licensed under MIT and Olares under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ollama and Olares?
Ollama is written in Go and Olares 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 Olares?
Choose Ollama if you want the larger community (181,161 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Olares if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.