head to head · open source
xerj vs Olares
xerj has 18,817 GitHub stars, 1,435 forks, 16 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Olares has 5,335 stars, 332 forks, 155 open issues and last shipped yesterday. xerj leads on adoption by 253% (18,817 vs 5,335 stars). xerj is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; Olares is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. xerj has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, Olares 6%. xerj was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (ai-agents), 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
| xerj | Olares | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 19K | ★ 5.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 332 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick xerj if
- You weight community size — 19K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Olares if
- You want the Olares feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Olares fits your workflow better
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…
About Olares
Olares Your AI Agent. Your Data. Your Hardware. Install Olares · Manage Olares with AI · Contribute Olares is an open source personal cloud OS you operate in plain language, built to run AI agents and LLMs on hardware you own. Powered by Kubernetes, it turns your machines into a self hosted AI platform accessible from any browser, giving everyone from individual users to small teams a unified place for compute, storage, networking, and apps. 🌟 If Olares is useful to you, consider giving the project a star. Your support encourages us to keep improving it. Why Olares Great AI needs to know you. That requires…
read the full Olares overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is xerj or Olares more popular?
xerj has 18,817 GitHub stars and Olares has 5,335. xerj has the larger community by that measure.
Are xerj and Olares free?
Both are open source. xerj is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Olares under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between xerj and Olares?
xerj is written in Rust and Olares in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, xerj or Olares?
Choose xerj if you want the larger community (18,817 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Olares if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.