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AI · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Ollama

The easiest way to run large language models locally

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Ollama launched in 2023; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1

    Hi HN A few folks and I have been working on this project for a couple weeks now. After previously working on the Docker project for a number of years (both on the container runtime and image registry side), the recent rise in open source language models made us think something similar needed to exist for large language models too. While not exactly the same as running linux containers, running LLMs shares quite a few of the same challenges. There are "base layers" (e.g. models like Llama 2), specific configuration to run correctly (parameters, temperature, context window sizes etc). There's…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    Run leading vision models locally with the new engine

    2025 · ollama.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    Massive local model speedup on Apple Silicon with MLX

    Apr 2026 · ollama.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    The easiest way to chat with local AI

    2025 · ollama.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5
    Llama 2▲263

    The next generation of Meta's open source LLM

    2023 · developer.meta.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    Hi Hackers, Excited to share a macOS app I've been working on: https://recurse.chat/ for chatting with local AI. While it's amazing that you can run AI models locally quite easily these days (through llama.cpp / llamafile / ollama / llm CLI etc.), I missed feature complete chat interfaces. Tools like LMStudio are super powerful, but there's a learning curve to it. I'd like to hit a middleground of simplicity and customizability for advanced users. Here's what separates RecurseChat out from similar apps: - UX designed for you to use local AI as a daily driver.…

    2024 · recurse.chat · its alternatives →

  7. 7
    Ollamac▲205

    A macOS app for interacting with the Ollama models

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8
    1Code▲569

    Just to clarify the background a bit. This project wasn’t planned as a big standalone release at first. On January 16, Ollama added support for an Anthropic-compatible API, and I was curious how far this could be pushed in practice. I decided to try plugging local Ollama models directly into a Claude Code-style workflow and see if it would actually work end to end. Here is the release note from Ollama that made this possible: https://ollama.com/blog/claude Technically, what I do is pretty straightforward: - Detect which local models are available in Ollama. - When…

    Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    I've been playing around with https://github.com/zphang/minimal-llama/ and https://github.com/tloen/alpaca-lora/blob/main/finetune.py, and wanted to create a simple UI where you can just paste text, tweak the parameters, and finetune the model quickly using a modern GPU. To prepare the data, simply separate your text with two blank lines. There's an inference tab, so you can test how the tuned model behaves. This is my first foray into the world of LLM finetuning, Python, Torch, Transformers, LoRA, PEFT, and Gradio. Enjoy!

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    Hey HN, Henry and Roman here - we've been building a cross-platform framework for deploying LLMs, VLMs, Embedding Models and TTS models locally on smartphones. Ollama enables deploying LLMs models locally on laptops and edge severs, Cactus enables deploying on phones. Deploying directly on phones facilitates building AI apps and agents capable of phone use without breaking privacy, supports real-time inference with no latency, we have seen personalised RAG pipelines for users and more. Apple and Google actively went into local AI models recently with the launch of Apple Foundation Frameworks…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11
    ModelHub▲317

    The missing menu bar app for local LLMs on Mac.

    May 2026 · studio.consciousengines.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    Hi HN! I'm just sharing a project I've been working on during the LLM Efficiency Challenge - you can now finetune Llama with QLoRA 5x faster than Huggingface's original implementation on your own local GPU. Some highlights: 1. Manual autograd engine - hand derived backprop steps. 2. QLoRA / LoRA 80% faster, 50% less memory. 3. All kernels written in OpenAI's Triton language. 4. 0% loss in accuracy - no approximation methods - all exact. 5. No change of hardware necessary. Supports NVIDIA GPUs since 2018+. CUDA 7.5+. 6. Flash Attention support via Xformers. 7. Supports 4bit and 16bit…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13
    Llama▲312

    3.1-405B: an open source model to rival GPT-4o / Claude-3.5

    2024 · developer.meta.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    Hi folks, we're Debanjum and Saba. We created Khoj as a hobby project 2+ years ago because: (1) Search on the desktop sucked; we just had keyword search on the desktop vs google for the internet; and (2) Natural language search models had become good and easy to run on consumer hardware by this point. Once we made Khoj search incremental, I completely stopped using the default incremental search (C-s) in Emacs. Since then Khoj has grown to support more content types, deeper integrations and chat (using ChatGPT). With Llama 2 released last week, chat models are finally good and easy enough to…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15
    Apollo AI▲280

    Run local models like Llama on iOS

    2025 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    Llama 405B-level performance, at a fraction of the cost

    2024 · developer.meta.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17OS

    Complete AI Platform: RAG Systems & Intelligent Agents for Local AI

    2025 · rlama.dev · its alternatives →

  18. 18
  19. 19
    RLAMA▲138

    Open-Source RAG CLI for Ollama

    2025 · rlama.dev · its alternatives →

  20. 20
    Ava PLS▲94

    Desktop app for running LLMs locally

    2023 · avapls.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    Hi HN, I'm excited to introduce OllaMan, a desktop application designed to streamline your workflow with Ollama local AI models. If you're already using Ollama, you've likely experienced its power in running large language models (LLMs) locally. However, managing models, switching between them, and engaging in conversations often requires frequent command-line interaction, which can be inefficient and less intuitive for many users. OllaMan aims to solve these pain points by providing an intuitive and elegant graphical user interface (GUI), especially tailored for macOS users, adhering to…

    2025 · ollaman.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    A "large" language model running on a microcontroller - maxbbraun/llama4micro

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    x ollama - The command-line client tool for Ollama, an open-source framework for running large language models locally.

    2024 · x-cmd.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24
    ChattyUI▲149

    Run open-source LLMs locally in the browser using WebGPU

    2024 · its alternatives →

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →