LM Studio vs Ollama vs Open WebUI
Running models on your own machine, for privacy, cost, or offline work. These three are often used together rather than instead of each other.
All 3 checked against the vendor's own pricing page · checked Sep 2026
All comparisons
Which should you pick?
Ollama is the runtime and the one to start with: a single command pulls and serves a model, and most other local tooling expects it to be there. LM Studio wraps a similar capability in a desktop GUI, which matters if you would rather not live in a terminal. Open WebUI is not really a competitor to either, it is a browser front end you point at a runtime you already have. A common setup is Ollama underneath and Open WebUI on top.
| Visit LM Studio | Visit Ollama | Visit Open WebUI | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it costs | |||
| Pricing | Freemium | Open source | Freemium |
| Pricing details | Completely free | Free and open-source | Free to self-host with the full feature set. Enterprise licensing and support are contact-only with no published price, so price_from and price_to are NULL. Note the licence: from v0.6.6 (April 2025) the BSD-3 licence adds a branding-protection clause, so deployments above 50 users in a 30-day window may not remove Open WebUI branding without an enterprise licence. Code up to v0.6.5 remains BSD-3 and can be forked freely. |
| Price range | $0 - $100/moChecked 2026-09-18 | $0 - $500/moChecked 2026-09-18 | Custom pricing, contact salesChecked 2026-09-15 |
| Free option | Free tier | Free tier | Free tier |
| Plans |
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|
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| What it is | |||
| What it does | Run local LLMs on your desktop completely free. Download, run, and chat with Llama 2, Mistral models offline. No API keys needed, full privacy guaranteed. | Ollama is the simplest way to get started with running open-source language models locally on your machine. Free and open source. | A self-hosted AI platform that puts Ollama, OpenAI, Anthropic or any compatible endpoint behind a single interface, extensible with Python tools and MCP. |
| The details | |||
| GitHub stars | Not available | 178,962stars | 150,112stars |
| Language | Not available | Go | Python |
| Last commit | Not available | 19 Aug 2026 | 26 Aug 2026 |
| Tags | local-llmdesktop-appoffline-aimodel-runnerchat-interface | local-llmopen-sourceoffline-aillamamodel-runner | self-hostedinfrastructuredeploymentdockeropen-source |
What it costs
- Pricing
- Freemium
- Pricing details
- Completely free
- Price range
- $0 - $100/moChecked 2026-09-18
- Free option
- Free tier
- Plans
- Free$0/mo
- Bionic+$20/mo
- Pro$100/mo
What it is
- What it does
- Run local LLMs on your desktop completely free. Download, run, and chat with Llama 2, Mistral models offline. No API keys needed, full privacy guaranteed.
The details
- GitHub stars
- Not available
- Language
- Not available
- Last commit
- Not available
- Tags
- local-llmdesktop-appoffline-aimodel-runnerchat-interface
What it costs
- Pricing
- Open source
- Pricing details
- Free and open-source
- Price range
- $0 - $500/moChecked 2026-09-18
- Free option
- Free tier
- Plans
- Free$0/mo
- Pro$20/mo
- Max$100/mo
- Team$500/mo
- EnterpriseContact sales
What it is
- What it does
- Ollama is the simplest way to get started with running open-source language models locally on your machine. Free and open source.
The details
- GitHub stars
- 178,962stars
- Language
- Go
- Last commit
- 19 Aug 2026
- Tags
- local-llmopen-sourceoffline-aillamamodel-runner
What it costs
- Pricing
- Freemium
- Pricing details
- Free to self-host with the full feature set. Enterprise licensing and support are contact-only with no published price, so price_from and price_to are NULL. Note the licence: from v0.6.6 (April 2025) the BSD-3 licence adds a branding-protection clause, so deployments above 50 users in a 30-day window may not remove Open WebUI branding without an enterprise licence. Code up to v0.6.5 remains BSD-3 and can be forked freely.
- Price range
- Custom pricing, contact salesChecked 2026-09-15
- Free option
- Free tier
- Plans
- Standard Use (self-hosted, free)$0/mo
- Enterprise License (contact sales)Contact sales
What it is
- What it does
- A self-hosted AI platform that puts Ollama, OpenAI, Anthropic or any compatible endpoint behind a single interface, extensible with Python tools and MCP.
The details
- GitHub stars
- 150,112stars
- Language
- Python
- Last commit
- 26 Aug 2026
- Tags
- self-hostedinfrastructuredeploymentdockeropen-source
Read the full reviews
What each one is actually like to use, tested by hand rather than summarised from the vendor’s own page.
