head to head · open source
Ollama vs SeaGOAT
Ollama has 181,184 GitHub stars, 17,921 forks, 3,957 open issues and last shipped yesterday. SeaGOAT has 1,308 stars, 92 forks, 44 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. Ollama leads on adoption by 13,752% (181,184 vs 1,308 stars). Ollama is written in Go under MIT; SeaGOAT is written in Python under MIT. Ollama has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, SeaGOAT 7%. 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 | SeaGOAT | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 181K | ★ 1.3K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 18K | ⑂ 92 |
| 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 SeaGOAT if
- You want the SeaGOAT feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and SeaGOAT 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 SeaGOAT
[!TIP] Check out zeitgrep, another search tool I am working on! SeaGOAT A code search engine for the AI age. SeaGOAT is a local search tool that leverages vector embeddings to enable you to search your codebase semantically. Getting started Install SeaGOAT In order to install SeaGOAT, you need to have the following dependencies already installed on your computer: Python 3.11 or newer ripgrep bat ( optional , highly recommended) When bat is installed, it is used to display results as long as color is enabled. When SeaGOAT is used as part of a pipeline, a grep line output format is used. When color is enabled, but …
read the full SeaGOAT overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ollama or SeaGOAT more popular?
Ollama has 181,184 GitHub stars and SeaGOAT has 1,308. Ollama has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ollama and SeaGOAT free?
Both are open source. Ollama is licensed under MIT and SeaGOAT under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ollama and SeaGOAT?
Ollama is written in Go and SeaGOAT in Python. 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 SeaGOAT?
Choose Ollama if you want the larger community (181,184 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose SeaGOAT if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.