head to head · open source
Ollama vs xerj
Ollama has 185,702 GitHub stars, 18,873 forks, 3,957 open issues and last shipped yesterday. xerj has 18,817 stars, 1,435 forks, 16 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Ollama leads on adoption by 887% (185,702 vs 18,817 stars). Ollama is written in Go under MIT; xerj is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Ollama has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, xerj 8%. xerj 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 | xerj | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 186K | ★ 19K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 19K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| 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 xerj if
- You want the xerj feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and xerj 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 xerj
XERJ XERJ is a community trusted local AI search that indexes any folder automatically, so your coding agent stops burning tokens reading files one by one and pulls the exact code it needs instead. Reference coding is its main use case and the clearest win: point an agent at a task and it downloads the open source repos closest to it, indexes them, and reuses how they solved the problem before writing its own code. In a controlled study that cut a coding agent's output tokens by 2.7x at the same 16/16 solve rate (case study), and people report roughly 5x in everyday work (field reports). It is enough for a…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ollama or xerj more popular?
Ollama has 185,702 GitHub stars and xerj has 18,817. Ollama has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ollama and xerj free?
Both are open source. Ollama is licensed under MIT and xerj under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ollama and xerj?
Ollama is written in Go and xerj in Rust. 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 xerj?
Choose Ollama if you want the larger community (185,702 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose xerj if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.