Ollama pricing (2026): is Ollama free, and when is Pro worth it?
updated ยท prices checked on vendor pages
quick answer: running models on your own machine with Ollama is free and unlimited. you only pay for Ollama's cloud models: per token on pay as you go ($0 a month), or a plan with monthly usage credits: Pro $20/mo ($200 a year), Max $100/mo, Team $500/mo, Enterprise custom.
Ollama is #2 of 3 on our local models board (8.5/10) because it's the quickest way to get an open model running behind an API: one command to pull and run it, a REST API on localhost:11434. the paid plans don't change that. they're for when your laptop runs out of puff and you want bigger open models in the cloud from the same tool.
the plans
| plan | price | cloud usage included | concurrent requests |
|---|---|---|---|
| local | free | runs on your hardware, unlimited | your hardware's problem |
| pay as you go | $0/mo | none: pay per token for every cloud model, no service fees | 3 |
| Pro | $20/mo, or $200/yr (about $16.67/mo) | $60 of usage credits a month, plus larger pro models | 3 |
| Max | $100/mo | $300 of usage credits a month, early access to the newest models | 10 |
| Team | $500/mo | unlimited users, $1,000 of credits a month shared across the team, central billing | 10 |
| Enterprise | custom | model access controls, budgets per user and API key | not listed |
prices from Ollama's pricing page, checked tonight. fast mode on Pro is listed as coming soon.
is Ollama free?
yes, for local models, and without a catch: Ollama's own words are that running models on your own hardware is always unlimited. what you pay for that is electricity, RAM and the occasional fan noise.
the cloud isn't free. pay as you go has no monthly fee, but every cloud request is billed per token at that model's rate.
how the cloud credits work
- credits are dollars, not requests. Pro's $60 or Max's $300 is spent at each model's per-token price, so a big model burns it faster than a small one.
- included credits go first, then any credits you've bought. every plan, pay as you go included, can buy more.
- no rollover. unused included usage disappears at your monthly reset (the day your subscription started, annual plans too).
- you get a heads up by email at 90% of your included usage on paid plans.
- off-peak is cheaper on some models. off-peak means outside 12:00 to 18:00 UTC on weekdays (that's 8 AM to 2 PM ET while US clocks are on daylight time) and all weekend.
deepseek-v4.1-flash, for one, drops from $0.30 to $0.15 per million input tokens and $1.20 to $0.60 output.
a few cloud rates per million tokens, input / output: gpt-oss:20b $0.07 / $0.30, gpt-oss:120b $0.15 / $0.60, deepseek-v4.1-flash $0.30 / $1.20, kimi-k3 $3.00 / $15.00. the full table is on Ollama's pricing page.
when is Ollama Pro worth it?
- you only run models locally: don't pay. the free app does everything.
- you dip into cloud models now and then: pay as you go. no fee, you pay for what you send.
- you're regularly spending around $20 or more a month on cloud tokens: Pro gives you $60 of credits for $20 (if you'd actually use them), plus the larger pro models.
- you run several agents at once: Max, mostly for the 10 concurrent requests. Pro and pay as you go are capped at 3, and extra requests queue.
- a team on open models: Team at $500 a month covers unlimited users and $1,000 of shared credits.
what the cloud plans give a dev
the same API, local or cloud. call https://ollama.com/api/chat with an OLLAMA_API_KEY, or point OpenAI or Anthropic clients at it (each supports a subset of the original API). no local install needed for that.
coding agents on open models. ollama launch claude, ollama launch codex and ollama launch opencode hook those agents up to Ollama's models, with Ollama handling the sign-in.
the privacy bits. Ollama says cloud prompts and responses are never logged or trained on, models are hosted mainly in the US (sometimes routed to Europe for capacity), and its hosting partners must run no logging, no training and zero data retention. you can turn cloud features off and stay local only.
Ollama vs the other ways to pay for open models
- fastest local, no cloud at all: llama.cpp is #1 (9.0/10), free under MIT. see Ollama vs llama.cpp
- a desktop app for local models: LM Studio is #3 (7.5/10), free locally
- one API key for hundreds of models, closed ones too: OpenRouter
- an open source coding agent to plug Ollama into: OpenCode, see OpenCode pricing
the rest of the field
the table: the rest of the field
| rank | tool | best for | free tier | paid from | numptr score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #2 | Ollama | devs who want local models running in minutes behind a simple API | run models locally with no limits, plus starter cloud credits on starter models | Free $0 | 8.5/10 |
| #1 | llama.cpp | devs who want the fastest local inference and full control of the build | free and open source (MIT); no account, no paid tier | free: you run it on your own hardware | 9.0/10 |
| #3 | LM Studio | devs who want a GUI for local models plus a local API for their app | run local models via llama.cpp and MLX, Bionic Agent, limited web search | Free $0 | 7.5/10 |
faq
is Ollama free to use?
yes. downloading and running models locally is free and unlimited. only Ollama's cloud models cost money.
how much is Ollama Pro?
$20 a month, or $200 a year billed up front (about $16.67 a month). it includes $60 of cloud usage credits a month, larger pro models and 3 concurrent requests.
what's the difference between Ollama Pro and Max?
Max is $100 a month: $300 of usage credits instead of $60, early access to the newest models, and 10 concurrent requests instead of 3.
do Ollama cloud credits roll over?
no. included usage refreshes each month on your subscription start date, and unused credit doesn't carry over.
does Ollama train on my prompts?
Ollama says cloud prompt and response data is never logged or trained on. local models never leave your machine.
tools in this guide
sources
checked 2026-10-28
- Ollama pricing (pay as you go $0, Pro $20/mo or $200/yr with $60 credits, Max $100/mo with $300, Team $500/mo with unlimited users and $1,000 shared credits, Enterprise custom, concurrency 3 and 10, credit order, no rollover, monthly reset, 90% email, off-peak hours, per-model token prices, hosting and data policy): https://ollama.com/pricing
- Ollama cloud docs (API key, ollama.com/api/chat, OpenAI and Anthropic clients, ollama launch claude/codex/opencode, no training, disable cloud features): https://docs.ollama.com/cloud
- ranks, scores, verdicts and plans: numptr data/tools.json (local models board)