ScienceHuman reviewed
Ollama vs MLX — Local Inference Framework Showdown
Running LLMs locally means picking the right framework. We benchmarked Ollama vs MLX on Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB. Speed Comparison Framework Quant Speed Memo…
Running LLMs locally means picking the right framework. We benchmarked Ollama vs MLX on Mac Studio M3 Ultra 96GB.
Speed Comparison
| Framework | Quant | Speed | Memory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ollama Q8 | Q8 | ~22 t/s | ~38GB |
| MLX 4bit | 4bit | ~30 t/s | ~20GB |
| Ollama Q4_K_M | Q4 | ~35 t/s | ~21GB |
Key Differences
Tool calling works on Ollama's native API but breaks on /v1 endpoints. MLX requires custom tool calling implementation.
Verdict
Ollama for daily reasoning (better ecosystem, simpler ops). MLX only when you need every last token/sec. We run both MS01/MS02 on Ollama for unified operations.