# Jan vs Ollama

> Ollama has a score of 56.6 (C) against Jan's 51.4 (D). Both do local inference. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 34 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-ollama
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-ollama.md (~1,500 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-ollama.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-ollama.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-04

Ollama has a score of 56.6 (C) against Jan's 51.4 (D). Both do local inference. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 34 points.

- Jan: grade D, 51.4/100, rank #349 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/jan.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/jan.json
- Ollama: grade C, 56.6/100, rank #302 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/ollama.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/ollama.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Jan for reliability (+15), security & auth (+15), transparency & trust (+6).

Pick Ollama for schema & documentation (+23), agent ergonomics (+29), maintenance & community (+34).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Jan | Ollama | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 68 | 53 | Jan +15 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 56 | 79 | Ollama +23 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 46 | 75 | Ollama +29 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 43 | 28 | Jan +15 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 60 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 47 | 81 | Ollama +34 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 69 | 63 | Jan +6 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -4 | -4 | |
| **Total** | | **51.4 · D** | **56.6 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Jan | Ollama |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model platform | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Menlo Research | Ollama Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | None |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT (server, CLI and desktop app). Ollama Cloud is a closed service under the ollama.com terms, and each model carries its own licence |
| Tools exposed | none | none |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-07-23 | 2026-10-01 |
| Popularity | 45k stars | 181k stars, 872k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2/5 (2) | 2.5/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Jan.** Apache-2.0, with installers for macOS, Windows and Linux plus Flathub and the Microsoft Store. No release since 0.8.4 on 23 July 2026, while a security fix waits on main.

**Ollama.** An OpenAPI 3.1 file for the 15 native operations and llms.txt with 68 links to Markdown pages. No credential on the local API, and any caller that reaches it can pull, push, create and delete models.

## Before you call either

### Jan

1. Ask the owner to start the server (Settings, Local API Server) or run `jan serve`. Nothing listens until then
2. Call http://127.0.0.1:1337/v1 for the app and localhost:6767/v1 for `jan serve`. The ports differ
3. Read /openapi.json from the running server, not the spec on the docs site, which describes the retired Cortex API
4. Branch on the status code. Error bodies are plain text
5. Keep the bind at 127.0.0.1 on 0.8.4. Trusted Hosts is ignored on 0.0.0.0 until the next release

### Ollama

1. Send `"stream": false` for one JSON body. The native routes stream NDJSON by default
2. Set `OLLAMA_CONTEXT_LENGTH=64000` or `options.num_ctx` before agent work. The default is 4k below 24 GiB of VRAM
3. Back off on a 503. It means the queue (512 by default) is full
4. Put an authenticating proxy in front before binding past 127.0.0.1. The server checks no credential
5. Expect model names with a `cloud` tag to run on Ollama's servers. They need `ollama signin` and fail with `OLLAMA_NO_CLOUD=1`

## Other comparisons with Jan or Ollama

- [AnythingLLM vs Jan](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anythingllm-vs-jan.md)
- [AnythingLLM vs Ollama](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anythingllm-vs-ollama.md)
- [GPT4All vs Jan](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpt4all-vs-jan.md)
- [GPT4All vs Ollama](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpt4all-vs-ollama.md)
- [Jan vs Khoj](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-khoj.md)
- [Jan vs llama.cpp](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-llama-cpp.md)
- [Jan vs LM Studio](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-lm-studio.md)
- [Jan vs LocalAI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-localai.md)
- [Jan vs Open WebUI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-open-webui.md)
- [Jan vs screenpipe](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-screenpipe.md)
- [Khoj vs Ollama](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/khoj-vs-ollama.md)
- [llama.cpp vs Ollama](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/llama-cpp-vs-ollama.md)
- [LM Studio vs Ollama](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lm-studio-vs-ollama.md)
- [LocalAI vs Ollama](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/localai-vs-ollama.md)
- [Ollama vs Open WebUI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ollama-vs-open-webui.md)
- [Ollama vs screenpipe](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ollama-vs-screenpipe.md)
- [Jan vs Underdog](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-underdog.md)
- [Ollama vs Underdog](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ollama-vs-underdog.md)