head to head · open source
Ollama vs OpenLIT
Ollama has 181,161 GitHub stars, 17,917 forks, 3,957 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenLIT has 2,770 stars, 388 forks, 60 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Ollama leads on adoption by 6,440% (181,161 vs 2,770 stars). Ollama is written in Go under MIT; OpenLIT is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. Ollama has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, OpenLIT 14%. 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 | OpenLIT | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 181K | ★ 2.8K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 18K | ⑂ 388 |
| 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 OpenLIT if
- You want the OpenLIT 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 OpenLIT 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 OpenLIT
OpenLIT is an open source, OpenTelemetry native observability and evaluation platform for AI applications, AI agents and coding agents, built for engineers who run LLM backed systems and need to see what those systems actually did.
read the full OpenLIT overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ollama or OpenLIT more popular?
Ollama has 181,161 GitHub stars and OpenLIT has 2,770. Ollama has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ollama and OpenLIT free?
Both are open source. Ollama is licensed under MIT and OpenLIT under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ollama and OpenLIT ?
Ollama is written in Go and OpenLIT 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 OpenLIT ?
Choose Ollama if you want the larger community (181,161 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose OpenLIT if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.