head to head · open source
Ollama vs vllm
Ollama has 185,702 GitHub stars, 18,873 forks, 3,957 open issues and last shipped yesterday. vllm has 96,158 stars, 24,317 forks, 7,953 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Ollama leads on adoption by 93% (185,702 vs 96,158 stars). Ollama is written in Go under MIT; vllm is written in Python under Apache-2.0. Ollama has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, vllm 25%. vllm was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (deepseek, gpt-oss, llama, 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 | vllm | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 186K | ★ 96K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 19K | ⑂ 24K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Ollama if
- You weight community size — 186K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick vllm if
- You want the vllm 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 vllm fits your workflow better
About Ollama
Ollama Start building with open models. Download macOS or download manually Windows or download manually Linux Manual install instructions Docker The official Ollama Docker image ollama/ollama is available on Docker Hub. Libraries ollama python ollama js Community Discord 𝕏 (Twitter) Reddit Get started You'll be prompted to run a model or connect Ollama to your existing agents or applications such as Claude Code , OpenClaw , OpenCode , Codex , Copilot , and more. Coding To launch a specific integration: Supported integrations include Claude Code, Codex, Copilot CLI, DeepSeek Harness, Droid, and OpenCode. AI…
read the full Ollama overview →
About vllm
Easy, fast, and cheap LLM serving for everyone 🔥 We have built a vLLM website to help you get started with vLLM. Please visit vllm.ai to learn more. For events, please visit vllm.ai/events to join us. About vLLM is a fast and easy to use library for LLM inference and serving. Originally developed in the Sky Computing Lab at UC Berkeley, vLLM has grown into one of the most active open source AI projects built and maintained by a diverse community of many dozens of academic institutions and companies from over 2000 contributors. vLLM is fast with: State of the art serving throughput Efficient management of…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ollama or vllm more popular?
Ollama has 185,702 GitHub stars and vllm has 96,158. Ollama has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ollama and vllm free?
Both are open source. Ollama is licensed under MIT and vllm under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ollama and vllm?
Ollama is written in Go and vllm 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 vllm?
Choose Ollama if you want the larger community (185,702 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose vllm if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.