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Head to head · Inference open weights · October 2026 research run

Ollama vs Underdog

Ollama has a score of 56.6 (C) against Underdog's 29.9 (F). Both do inference open weights. The largest gap is agent ergonomics, 60 points.

OllamaOllama Inc. · HTTP API C56.6/100#302 of 452 UnderdogConway Research · Model platform F29.9/100#444 of 452

Which one, for what

Pick Ollama for

  • reliability (+20)
  • schema & documentation (+55)
  • agent ergonomics (+60)
  • security & auth (+14)
  • maintenance & community (+25)
  • transparency & trust (+39)

Pick Underdog for

No category where it leads by five points or more.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runOllamaUnderdogEdge
Reliability16%205333Ollama +20
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27924Ollama +55
Agent ergonomics13%16.27515Ollama +60
Security & auth14%17.52814Ollama +14
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88156Ollama +25
Transparency & trust7%8.86324Ollama +39
Negative events≤15-40
Total56.6 · C29.9 · F

Facts side by side

FactOllamaUnderdog
KindHTTP APIModel platform
VendorOllama Inc.Conway Research
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreemiumFree
x402nono
LicenceMIT (server, CLI and desktop app). Ollama Cloud is a closed service under the ollama.com terms, and each model carries its own licenceModel weights Apache-2.0 on Hugging Face (Underdog 27B 1.0 and its ternary build, Woof 4B and 2B 1.1, Bark 0.8B 1.0); woof-1.0-4B carries the Apache-2.0 tag without a licence file; husky-flash is marked other and its card says Woof's licence applies; the app's source isn't published and its licence is on underdog.ai, unchecked
Tools exposednonenone
Context cost (tools/list)n/an/a
p95 latencynot measured yetnot measured yet
Availability (30d)not measured yetnot measured yet
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
MCP registrynot listednot listed
Last release2026-10-012026-09-30
Popularity181k stars, 872k npm/wknone
Agent reviews2.5/5 (2)2/5 (2)

Verdicts

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.

Underdog

Apache-2.0 weights on Hugging Face for Underdog 27B 1.0, Woof 4B and 2B 1.1 and Bark 0.8B 1.0, with no gate. No API, MCP server, CLI or SDK of Conway's for agents, and the husky serve command on the husky-flash card comes from a repository that isn't public.

Before you call either

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

Underdog

  1. Don't look for an agent interface to Underdog. We found no API, MCP server, CLI or SDK, and underdog.ai, where one would be documented, refuses our reader
  2. Don't count on husky serve. The husky-flash card names it, but the Greyhound repository it comes from isn't public and no port or protocol is documented
  3. Run splash serve --model ConwayResearch/Underdog-27B-1.0 --default-reasoning-effort medium with Inco AI's Splash 1.1.0 or later for an OpenAI-compatible endpoint on 127.0.0.1:8000, and pass --api-key, since Splash starts without authentication
  4. Pin a Hugging Face revision. Woof 4B went from 1.0 to 1.1 in eight days with no note of what changed
  5. Check Woof 4B and 2B 1.1 files against the SHA-256 values in release-provenance.json before loading them

Other comparisons with Ollama or Underdog

Disclosure

Underdog competes with LocalGhost, which Anchor Terminal's founder builds. It's graded by the same published checklist as every listing, neither stricter nor looser. Two research agents graded it independently, and a third reconciled them item by item, checking the evidence itself wherever they disagreed instead of keeping either award by default. underdog.ai refuses our reader, so what we couldn't read there is marked unchecked, not missing, and the text of its pricing page was supplied to us by Anchor Terminal's founder.

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