Ollamavs
AWS SageMaker
AWS SageMaker: Build, train, and deploy machine learning models at scale
Ollama
Open-source tool for running LLMs locally on desktop and servers
As of 29 August 2026, Ollama is free to use. Ollama is an open-source application that downloads and runs open-weight language models entirely on your machine. Softwr lists it under Machine Learning. Ollama is available on macOS, Windows, Linux, Self-hosted.
Overview
What Ollama does
Ollama is a free, open-source tool for local language model inference. The application simplifies the process of downloading and running open-weight models from providers like Meta, Mistral, and Qwen directly on users' computers. Rather than relying on cloud APIs, Ollama enables offline model operation after initial setup, eliminating ongoing API costs and vendor dependencies. The platform operates as a desktop and server application supporting Linux, macOS, and Windows. Models can be deployed in three configurations: locally on a single machine, across a cluster via Ollama Deploy, or in the cloud through managed services on AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure. Ollama indexes thousands of open models via its model repository, with trending options including deepseek-v4-flash (371k pulls), glm-5.2 (317k pulls), and kimi-k3 (38k pulls). Ollama differentiates from hosted APIs by eliminating per-token costs entirely. The trade-off is computational burden on the user's hardware—models requiring substantial memory or compute resources need appropriately powerful machines. The tool includes local serving with API compatibility, making it suitable for applications currently using OpenAI or Anthropic APIs. Being fully open-source with code on GitHub, Ollama appeals to developers prioritizing cost, privacy, and technical control over ease of use.
What people use it for
- Local development and testing without API costs or rate limits
- Privacy-sensitive applications requiring data to remain on-device
- Cost-sensitive deployments where computational resources are already available
- Fully offline environments or air-gapped networks
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Ollama.
- Requires user to provide computational hardware; no free cloud compute; models may not fit in available RAM on typical machines
- No hosted service option for inference; all computational burden falls to user
- Limited to open-weight models; cannot run proprietary models like GPT-4 or Claude locally
- Performance depends entirely on user's hardware; no SLAs or guarantees on speed
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Ollama
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- OllamavsGoogle Vertex AI
Google Vertex AI: Unified ML platform to build, deploy, and scale AI models
- OllamavsAzure Machine Learning
Azure Machine Learning: Enterprise-grade machine learning service
- OllamavsDataRobot
DataRobot: Enterprise AI platform for automated machine learning
Pricing
What Ollama costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Free
Free
- CLI, API, desktop apps
- Unlimited public models
- 40,000+ community integrations
- Private data retention
Pro
$20 /mo
- Access to larger, more powerful cloud models
- Run 3 concurrent cloud models
- 50x more usage than Free
Max
$100 /mo
- Run 10 concurrent cloud models
- 5x more usage than Pro
Team
$25 /mo
- Per seat pricing (5-seat minimum = $125/month)
- Shared billing
- Zero data retention
- Priority support
Enterprise
On request
- Custom pricing
- Volume discounts
- Security support
- Deployment planning
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
How much does Ollama cost?
Ollama is free to use with unlimited public models. Pro paid plans start at $20/month for 3 concurrent cloud models, or $100/month for Max with 10 concurrent models. Team plans cost $25/seat/month with a 5-seat minimum.
SourceWhat does the Ollama free tier include?
The free tier includes CLI and API access, unlimited public models, 40,000+ community integrations, and private data retention, though limited to 1 concurrent cloud model.
SourceHow much usage is included with each Ollama plan?
Pro includes 50x more usage than Free, and Max includes 5x more usage than Pro. Session limits reset every 5 hours and weekly limits reset every 7 days across all tiers.
SourceDoes Ollama log or train on user data?
No, Ollama explicitly states that prompt or response data is never logged or trained on, protecting user privacy across all plans.
SourceKeep looking
Where to go from Ollama
- Ollama alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Ollama pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Ollama badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Machine Learning softwareThe full category
- Best Machine Learning softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Machine Learning software for
Compare Ollama with
- AWS SageMaker
- Azure Machine Learning
- Google Vertex AI
- DataRobot
- Groq
- Mistral AI
- OpenRouter
- LangChain
- DVC
- OpenAI API
- Haystack
- Kubeflow
- Langwatch
- LlamaIndex
- Milvus
- Neptune.ai
- Semantic Kernel
- OpenAI API
Other Machine Learning software
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Free plan14 researched notesHosted API for OpenAI's language, embedding, image and audio models, billed per token
From $0.15/million-tokens14 researched notesLLM engineering platform for testing and evaluating AI agents in production
Free, then €29/mo10 researched notesHosted API for OpenAI's language, embedding, image and audio models, billed per token
From $0.15/million-tokens14 researched notes
Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Ollama, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Ollama
Ollama alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
Ollama pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
Compare Ollama
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