head to head · open source
Ollama vs server
Ollama has 181,290 GitHub stars, 17,939 forks, 3,957 open issues and last shipped yesterday. server has 8,250 stars, 2,105 forks, 495 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Ollama leads on adoption by 2,097% (181,290 vs 8,250 stars). Ollama is written in Go under MIT; server is written in C++ under GPL-2.0. Ollama has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, server 26%. 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 | server | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 181K | ★ 8.3K |
| License | MIT | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 18K | ⑂ 2.1K |
| 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 server if
- You want the server feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and server 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 server
MariaDB Server is a community developed, GPL 2.0 relational database server forked from MySQL by the original MySQL developers, aimed at teams that want MySQL compatibility with a sanely licensed, independently governed SQL server.
read the full server overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ollama or server more popular?
Ollama has 181,290 GitHub stars and server has 8,250. Ollama has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ollama and server free?
Both are open source. Ollama is licensed under MIT and server under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ollama and server?
Ollama is written in Go and server 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 server?
Choose Ollama if you want the larger community (181,290 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose server if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.