Ollama
Verified Oct 15, 2026 ActiveRuns open-weight language models locally from one command, with a hosted tier for larger models
Listed on EffectHub ·
Pricing
- Pricing model
- Freemium
- Paid options from
- $20/mo
- Billing
- Monthly
The local runtime is free. Cloud has a free tier with starter models and starter credits; Pro is $20 a month or $200 a year with $60 of monthly usage and three concurrent requests; Max $100 a month with $300 of usage and ten concurrent; Team (early access) $500 a month with $1,000 of shared usage and unlimited users; Enterprise is quoted. Usage beyond the allowance is bought as credits.
Use tool ↗About Ollama
Ollama packages open-weight models so that a single command pulls and runs one on your own machine, exposing a local HTTP API that editors, agents and frameworks can target instead of a cloud provider. Once the weights are downloaded it works offline, and desktop apps exist for macOS, Windows and Linux. Ollama Cloud adds hosted versions of models too large for a laptop, and the CLI and app switch between local and cloud without changing the calling code. The local runtime is free and open source; cloud plans are monthly subscriptions that bundle a usage-credit allowance with a concurrency limit, and the company states prompts are not stored or trained on.
- API
- Yes
- Last verified
- Oct 15, 2026
Verified sources
- Pricing page: Free with starter credits; Pro $20/month or $200/year with $60 monthly usage and concurrency 3; Max $100/month with $300 usage and concurrency 10; Team early access $500/month with $1,000 shared usage and unlimited users; Enterprise custom (15 October 2026)ollama.com ↗
- Home page positions Ollama as open models on your own machine and in the cloud, states prompts are never stored or trained on, cites 9 million monthly installs; footer copyright Ollama, no address (15 October 2026)ollama.com ↗
- Download page offers builds for macOS, Windows and Linux (15 October 2026)ollama.com ↗
Is Ollama legit?
We don’t label tools safe or unsafe. Below are the records we checked ourselves, each with the date we read it.
- Domain registered
- May 8, 2017 (9 years ago)Registry record (RDAP), registrar Cloudflare, Inc., looked up Sep 6, 2026
- TLS certificate
- Issued by Google Trust Services, valid until Dec 15, 2026Seen in our own connection to the site on Oct 15, 2026
- Last checked
- Oct 15, 2026The site answered
- On the market since
- 2023The vendor's own material, read by us
- Operated by
- Ollama Inc., United StatesOur research, card verified Oct 15, 2026
Pros & cons of Ollama
The simplest way to get an open-weight model answering on your own hardware, and its local API has become a default target that most agent frameworks already speak. The cloud tier is the practical escape hatch when a model will not fit in your RAM. What you do not get is fleet-scale serving: this is a single-node runtime, not an inference platform with autoscaling and usage metering.
Pros
- One command pulls and runs a model, with no environment wrangling
- Local HTTP API that most agent frameworks already support
- Works fully offline once weights are downloaded
- Cloud tier covers models too large for local hardware without changing client code
- Runtime is open source under a permissive licence
Cons
- Single-node runtime with no autoscaling or multi-tenant serving
- Cloud plans meter usage in dollar credits, so a heavy month can run past the included allowance
- Local speed is capped by your own GPU or RAM
Best for
- developers prototyping against local models
- privacy-constrained work that cannot leave the machine
- running an offline model behind an existing OpenAI-shaped client
Not for
- production multi-tenant serving at scale
- teams that need per-request billing and quotas
Watch out: Cloud subscriptions include a fixed usage allowance ($60 a month on Pro, $300 on Max); past that you buy credits, and automatic usage billing is on unless you switch it off.
Alternatives to Ollama
Ollama head-to-head
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