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Ollama vs Shimmy: catalog facts
Ollama	Shimmy
Freemium Running models locally is free. The optional hosted cloud inference starts at $20 a month.	Free Free software under Apache-2.0.
Windows, macOS, Linux, Command line	Windows, macOS, Linux, Command line
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	Runs GGUF models behind an OpenAI-compatible API Distributed as a single binary
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	Support is documented for specific model and quantization combinations
Downloadable app	Downloadable app
Open source	Open source
License: MIT	License: Apache-2.0
No account needed	Not stated if an account is needed
Works offline	Not stated if it works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 20, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked October 8, 2026

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