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LM Studio vs Ollama: catalog facts
LM Studio	Ollama
Freemium The free plan runs local models and the built-in agent. Paid plans from $20 a month add…	Freemium Running models locally is free. The optional hosted cloud inference starts at $20 a month.
Windows, macOS, Linux	Windows, macOS, Linux, Command line
Search and download models from Hugging Face without leaving the app Serves local models on OpenAI-compatible endpoints, locally and over the network	One command to download and run a model, with no Python environment to build first A REST API on localhost, so editors, scripts and agents can use the local model
Closed source, unlike most of the local-AI stack it builds on Cloud features require an account and a subscription	Model quality is bounded by your hardware; large models need a lot of VRAM or unified memory The company now also sells cloud inference, so read carefully which mode you are in
Downloadable app	Downloadable app
Closed source	Open source
License not stated	License: MIT
No account needed	No account needed
Works offline	Works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 20, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 20, 2026

Catalog facts only. Anything “not stated” is unconfirmed. Check full listings for details.