head to head · open source
Ollama vs zvec
Ollama has 181,290 GitHub stars, 17,939 forks, 3,957 open issues and last shipped yesterday. zvec has 15,972 stars, 998 forks, 56 open issues and last shipped today. Ollama leads on adoption by 1,035% (181,290 vs 15,972 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%. zvec 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 | zvec | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 181K | ★ 16K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 18K | ⑂ 998 |
| 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 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 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 zvec
Zvec is an open source, in process vector database written in C++ and licensed under Apache 2.0, built to embed directly into applications so that vector search, full text search, and hybrid retrieval run inside the developer's own process instead of behind a separate service.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ollama or zvec more popular?
Ollama has 181,290 GitHub stars and zvec has 15,972. 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 (181,290 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose zvec if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.