head to head · open source
Ollama vs vearch
Ollama has 181,184 GitHub stars, 17,921 forks, 3,957 open issues and last shipped yesterday. vearch has 2,326 stars, 365 forks, 170 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Ollama leads on adoption by 7,690% (181,184 vs 2,326 stars). Ollama is written in Go under MIT; vearch is written in Python under Apache-2.0. Ollama has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, vearch 16%. 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 | vearch | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 181K | ★ 2.3K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-07-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 18K | ⑂ 365 |
| 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 vearch if
- You want the vearch feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and vearch 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 vearch
简体中文 English Overview Vearch is a cloud native distributed vector database for efficient similarity search of embedding vectors in your AI applications. Key features Hybrid search : Both vector search and scalar filtering. Performance : Fast vector retrieval search from millions of objects in milliseconds. Scalability & Reliability : Replication and elastic scaling out. Document Restful APIs Tutorial 参考文档 OpenAPIs API Documentation SDK Usage Cases Use Vearch as a Memory Backend Vearch integrates with popular AI frameworks: Real world Demos VisualSearch : Vearch can be leveraged to build a complete visual search s…
read the full vearch overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ollama or vearch more popular?
Ollama has 181,184 GitHub stars and vearch has 2,326. Ollama has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ollama and vearch free?
Both are open source. Ollama is licensed under MIT and vearch under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ollama and vearch?
Ollama is written in Go and vearch 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 vearch?
Choose Ollama if you want the larger community (181,184 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose vearch if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.