Ollama Free Plan: What You Actually Get Before Paying
Ollama's local software is free, with no subscription or trial clock. The paid part is optional cloud use. Here is what costs nothing and what costs money.
By Galactic News Editorial · Published 2026-11-11T16:29:38+00:00 · Updated 2026-11-11T16:29:38+00:00
Ollama Free Plan: What You Actually Get Before Paying
Ollama's local software is free. There is no subscription, no trial clock, and no feature lock on the download. You install it, run models on your own computer, and pay nothing for the software itself. The part that costs money is Ollama's optional cloud service. It charges per token, and its paid plans add monthly usage credits. This guide explains what the free plan covers, what the cloud tiers cost, and what you will still spend on hardware and power.
What the Ollama free plan includes
The free part of Ollama is the local app. It runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux. It downloads open models, runs them on your hardware, and serves them through a local API. There is no cap on local use. Ollama's own pricing page states that running models on your own hardware is always unlimited. That is the core of the free plan.
Local use also means privacy by design. Your prompts stay on your machine. Ollama's homepage states that prompts are never stored or trained on. Nothing is sent to a server when you run a model locally. That matters for sensitive work, drafts, and code you do not want leaving your computer.
The software is open source under the MIT license. The source code is published on GitHub. That means anyone can inspect it, and the community can build on it. The model library is also free to browse. It lists open models for chat, coding, vision, embeddings, and reasoning.
The free tier also includes a pay-as-you-go cloud account at zero dollars. You pay only for the tokens you use in the cloud. There is no subscription attached to it. It includes three concurrent requests and no service fees. This is the entry point if you want to try a cloud model without committing to a plan.
What costs money: Ollama cloud pricing
Cloud use is where Ollama charges. The pricing page lists four tiers above the free pay-as-you-go account. Each one is aimed at a different level of use. Prices for cloud models are quoted per million tokens, with separate rates for input, cached input, and output.
Pro adds 60 dollars of usage credits each month. It also unlocks access to larger pro models. A fast mode is listed as coming soon. Max builds on Pro with 300 dollars of usage credits each month. It adds early access to the newest models and raises the limit to 10 concurrent requests. Team costs 500 dollars per month and is marked as early access. It includes 1,000 dollars of usage credits shared across the team, unlimited users, centralized billing, and priority support. Enterprise is custom priced, with volume pricing and model access controls.
Per-token rates vary widely by model. For example, gpt-oss:20b costs 0.07 dollars per million input tokens and 0.30 dollars per million output tokens. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash costs 0.30 dollars per million input tokens and 1.20 dollars per million output tokens. Larger models cost more. Kimi K3, for instance, is listed at 3.00 dollars per million input tokens and 15.00 dollars per million output tokens. Off-peak rates apply outside weekday hours of 12:00 to 18:00 UTC and all day on weekends for some models.
Two details matter for budgeting. First, included credits do not roll over. Unused credits refresh at each monthly reset. Second, Ollama sends an email reminder at 90 percent of included monthly usage on paid plans. You can turn that off in settings. Check the live pricing page before you commit, because cloud rates and plan details can change.
The real cost of running Ollama for free
Free software is not the same as free computing. Local models run on your hardware. That hardware has a cost, even if you already own it. The main limit is memory. Ollama's README suggests at least 8 GB of RAM to run 7B models, 16 GB for 13B models, and 32 GB for 33B models. Small models run on an ordinary laptop. Large models need a strong GPU or a server.
Electricity is the other running cost. A laptop running a small model uses little power. A desktop GPU running a large model for hours uses far more. The cost is small for casual use. It adds up for heavy, always-on workloads. Compare that with cloud pricing before you pick a side.
Storage is a third cost. Model files range from under a gigabyte for tiny models to tens of gigabytes for large ones. A 70B model can take around 40 GB of disk. Keep an eye on disk space if you try several models. You can remove models you no longer use with a single command.
Ollama free plan vs Pro and Max
The table below compares the tiers using figures from Ollama's official pricing page. Pro and Max are paid tiers, so check the live page for their current monthly prices.
| Tier | Monthly usage credits | Concurrent requests | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pay as you go | None included | 3 | Trying cloud models with no commitment |
| Pro | $60 | 3 | Regular cloud use and larger pro models |
| Max | $300 | 10 | Heavy cloud use and early model access |
| Team | $1,000 (shared) | 10 | Teams sharing billing and access |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Large teams with volume pricing |
Local use sits outside this table. It is unlimited on every tier, including the free one. That is the key point. The paid tiers buy cloud capacity and credits. They do not unlock extra local features. If your hardware can run the models you need, the free plan may be all you ever need.
Who should stay free, and who should pay
Stay on the free plan if you run models on your own machine. It suits learning, coding help, writing drafts, and small projects. It also suits anyone with privacy needs. Your data never leaves your computer. The only costs are hardware, power, and disk space.
Consider a paid tier if your hardware cannot run the model you need. Large reasoning and coding models may exceed your RAM or GPU. Cloud access lets you use them without buying new hardware. It also suits teams that need shared billing and access controls. Compare the monthly credit amount with your expected token use first. A small amount of cloud use may cost less on pay-as-you-go than on a plan.
Watch for one trap. It is easy to treat cloud credits as free money. They are not. Once the credits run out, extra use draws from a purchased balance. Set a budget and check usage in your account settings. That keeps a small experiment from turning into a surprise bill.
Bottom line
The Ollama free plan is genuinely free for local use. There is no subscription, no local usage cap, and no paywall on the core software. You pay only when you choose the cloud, and then you pay per token or through a plan with monthly credits. If your computer can handle the models you want, start free and stay free. Pay only when your hardware, or your team, needs more than local use can give.