head to head · open source
Ollama vs zvec
Ollama has 185,702 GitHub stars, 18,873 forks, 3,957 open issues and last shipped yesterday. zvec has 16,176 stars, 1,015 forks, 56 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Ollama leads on adoption by 1,048% (185,702 vs 16,176 stars). Ollama is written in Go under MIT; zvec is written in C++ under Apache-2.0. Ollama has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, zvec 6%. 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Ollama | zvec | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 186K | ★ 16K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 19K | ⑂ 1.0K |
| 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 zvec if
- You want the zvec feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and zvec 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 zvec
English 中文 🚀 Quickstart 🏠 Home 📚 Docs 📊 Benchmarks 🔎 DeepWiki 🎮 Discord 🐦 X (Twitter) Zvec is an open source, in process vector database — lightweight, lightning fast, and designed to embed directly into applications. Battle tested within Alibaba Group, it delivers production grade, low latency and scalable similarity search with minimal setup. [!Important] 🚀 v0.7.0 (August 24, 2026) zvec grep ( zg ) : Local first workspace search that unifies ripgrep, BM25, and vector search behind one CLI — built for humans and AI agents. ReMe integration : zvec is now a file store backend in ReMe, the memory…
More in AI & Machine Learning
Related comparisons
More Machine Learning Infrastructure projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Machine Learning Infrastructure field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Ollama or zvec more popular?
Ollama has 185,702 GitHub stars and zvec has 16,176. Ollama has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ollama and zvec free?
Both are open source. Ollama is licensed under MIT and zvec under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ollama and zvec?
Ollama is written in Go and zvec in C++. 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 zvec?
Choose Ollama if you want the larger community (185,702 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose zvec if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.