Comparison
This page compares VRAMPilot with Ollama, LM Studio and plain llama.cpp on one axis only: what happens around out-of-memory. It is not a general product comparison — Ollama and LM Studio are more polished products with model catalogs, chat UIs and large communities. The comparison is based on a by-name probe of LM Studio, Ollama and Jan performed in June 2026 (sources named in validation/MARKET.md).
| Capability | VRAMPilot | Ollama | LM Studio | plain llama.cpp -fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Load-time OOM prevention estimate before launch, auto-offload, context sizing |
Yes | Yes — auto-offload, VRAM-tiered context defaults | Yes — pre-load estimator, dedicated-GPU-memory limit | Yes — -fit in recent builds |
| Runtime OOM-recovery detect → back off → retry until it boots and serves |
Yes — validated end-to-end on NVIDIA and AMD | None found in the probe | None found in the probe | No — a failed launch fails |
| Remembers what booted append-only, inspectable, the next launch starts there |
Yes | Not that we found | Not that we found | No |
| In-inference watchdog VRAM collapse mid-generation → controlled restart at a degraded configuration |
Yes on NVIDIA, where free VRAM is measured; honestly downgraded to process+health watch elsewhere | None found — the probe found no tool that monitors VRAM during inference | None found — same | No |
| Honest lossiness reporting the back-off trail, named tradeoffs |
Yes — the report names what was traded | No — overflow can silently spill to system RAM | No equivalent report | Flags are explicit because you set them; no tradeoff narrative |
| Figures traceable to sources every figure links its validation file, served under /proofs/ on this site |
Yes — and this site's build fails if a figure does not match its source file | Not a claim they make | Not a claim they make | Not a claim they make |
Be fair about the first row
Load-time prevention is table stakes, and everyone has it — including llama.cpp itself since the -fit option appeared in recent builds. VRAMPilot does not claim auto-fit, VRAM estimation or context sizing as differentiators. The unserved part, per the probe, is the runtime recovery loop, plus the persistence and the honest reporting around it.
The probe, and its expiry date
The probe was an active attempt to kill VRAMPilot's differentiator by searching LM Studio, Ollama, Jan and niche tools by name. The verdict was that the runtime OOM-recovery leg is genuinely unserved; live VRAM profiling and auto-context are largely covered and are claimed by nobody here as new.
Two honest caveats:
- Competitors evolve. A point release of any of these tools could add a recovery loop — it is an engineering feature, not a physical barrier. This table describes June 2026, not forever. If you find a local tool that ships a detect → back-off → retry loop, the comparison above is out of date and we want to know.
- "Not that we found" is not "does not exist." The persistence and watchdog rows reflect our search, which no tool we probed advertises; the runtime-recovery row is the one probed feature by feature in
validation/MARKET.md.