Ollama Cloud explained: is it free, what Pro costs in pounds, where your data goes, and how to switch it off (2026)

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Ollama Cloud at a glance: The same ollama commands, but the model runs on Ollama's servers; A small monthly allowance for a set of starter models; $20 a month (about £15) with $60 of usage credits; VAT not mentioned; Processed transiently, not logged and not used for training, Ollama says; Mainly in the United States, with some routing to Europe; Set OLLAMA_NO_CLOUD=1, or disable_ollama_cloud in server.json

Ollama Cloud is Ollama's hosted service: you type the same ollama commands and call the same API, but the model runs on Ollama's servers instead of your Mac. There is a free tier with a small monthly allowance for a set of "starter" models, and Ollama Pro costs $20 a month (about £15, VAT not mentioned) with $60 of usage credits included, as of 22 October 2026. Ollama says cloud prompts and responses are processed transiently, never logged and never used for training, on compute "primarily in the United States" with some routing to Europe. If you want none of it, one line in a settings file turns cloud off for good. Ollama says 8.9 million developers use its software each month. New to Ollama? Start with the Ollama guide and come back here when you see a model with a cloud badge.

Last updated 23 October 2026. Written by Annie, a search and digital marketing specialist. Every price, quote and command below comes from ollama.com, docs.ollama.com, Ollama's privacy policy and terms, Ollama's GitHub and the ICO, all checked 22 October 2026; traffic estimates come from Semrush, and user comments from posts on Reddit and X that I read in full. See the editorial policy.

Ollama Cloud at a glance: The same ollama commands, but the model runs on Ollama's servers; A small monthly allowance for a set of starter models; $20 a month (about £15) with $60 of usage credits; VAT not mentioned; Processed transiently, not logged and not used for training, Ollama says; Mainly in the United States, with some routing to Europe; Set OLLAMA_NO_CLOUD=1, or disable_ollama_cloud in server.json
Ollama Cloud prices, data handling and the switch to turn it off. Checked 22 October 2026.

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What Ollama Cloud is

Ollama built its name on running open models locally. Cloud models arrived in preview on 19 September 2025, pitched as a way to "run larger models with fast, datacenter-grade hardware" while you "keep using your local tools". The documentation puts it plainly: "No model or app download required."

Ollama Cloud pricing page showing four plans: Free at $0, Pro at $20 a month or $200 a year, Team at $500 a month in early access, and Enterprise at a custom price
Ollama's pricing page with the Free, Pro, Team and Enterprise plans, 23 October 2026. Screenshot: aiagents.org.uk.

There are three ways in. The Ollama app or command line: sign in once, then run a model with the cloud tag and it behaves like any other model in your list. The ollama.com API directly, with an API key and no Ollama installation at all. Or the bundled integrations, such as ollama launch claude and ollama launch codex, plus the Apps panel on macOS that connects Claude Desktop or ChatGPT Desktop.

ollama signin
ollama run gemma4:cloud

The hosted API also speaks OpenAI's and Anthropic's formats, so tools written for those services can point at https://ollama.com/v1 instead. That is how the Claude Code with Ollama setup works. As of 22 October 2026 the model library lists 21 cloud models alongside 242 local ones.

How many people use Ollama and Ollama Cloud

The company says Ollama has 8.9 million monthly active developers, a figure from its Series B announcement on 9 July 2026. It has not published how many of them use the cloud or pay for a plan. The nearest thing is a line in its blog post that day: "On average, Ollama's cloud has more than doubled in token volume every month".

MeasureFigureSource and date
Monthly active developers (all of Ollama)8.9 million, the company saysSeries B press release, 9 July 2026
Cloud token volume"more than doubled" every month on average, the company saysOllama blog, 9 July 2026
Most downloaded cloud-only modelsminimax-m2.7 2.4M; minimax-m3 526.5K; kimi-k2.6 495.7K; deepseek-v4-pro 466.6Kollama.com library, 22 October 2026
Visits to ollama.com, worldwide12.6M visits from 6.2M unique visitors (estimate)Semrush, September 2026
GitHub stars183.8k, with 18.4k forksgithub.com/ollama/ollama, 22 October 2026

Read these with care. I listed cloud-only models because the counts for gemma4 (27.6M) and gpt-oss (14.1M) mix local and cloud downloads, and a download counts pulls, not people. Semrush's visit figures are estimates, and site visits are not app users.

UK interest is small but pointed. Semrush estimates 480 searches a month in the UK for "ollama cloud", 170 for "is ollama cloud free" and 110 for "is ollama safe" (October 2026), which is why this page answers the price and safety questions head on.

Is it free?

Partly. Running models on your own hardware is, in Ollama's words, "always unlimited" and costs nothing. The Free cloud plan is $0 and includes "Starter usage credits" for "a smaller set of starter models", with one request at a time. Ollama does not publish how much that allowance is worth or which models are starter models, so treat it as a taster rather than a working budget.

Two things make the free tier more useful than it sounds. You can buy usage credits on the Free plan with "no service fees, no subscription required", which unlocks every cloud model at the published per-token rate. And Ollama runs limited-time promotions: Reflection's Beam model has been "free (for a limited time only!)" since 16 October 2026 and shows as "free" in the cloud model list. On 20 October 2026 Ollama also said on X that MiniMax M3.1 Flash "will be free on Ollama's Cloud" for three days, though the model list still shows its usual price. The web search API is also included with a free account.

PlanPrice (as of 22 October 2026)Included usage per monthConcurrent requests
Free$0Starter credits for starter models (amount not published)1
Pro$20 a month, or $200 a year (about £15 or £150)$60 (about £45)3
Max$100 a month (about £75)$300 (about £225)10
Team (early access)$500 a month (about £375)$1,000 shared, unlimited users (about £750)10
EnterpriseCustomCustomNot stated

Three rules apply to every plan. Included usage resets monthly and "does not roll over". Purchased credits "expire one year after they are added to your account". And Ollama is "one account per person", aged 18 and over.

What Pro costs in the UK

Ollama Pro is listed at "$20 / mo. or $200/yr billed annually", which the page also shows as "$16.67 / mo. billed annually". At 1 USD = 0.75 GBP that is about £15 a month, or about £150 a year (about £12.50 a month). Prices are in dollars only; there is no pound price list.

VAT is not mentioned anywhere on the pricing page. The terms of service say "You are responsible for all applicable taxes" and that "Payments are processed securely by Stripe". The UK standard VAT rate is 20%, so if it is added at checkout, Pro would come to $24 a month (about £18). Check the total on the Stripe checkout screen before you confirm.

What you get: "$60 of usage credits per month", "Access to larger pro models", three concurrent requests and "Fast mode (coming soon)". Usage is charged per token at each model's published rate, and when the $60 runs out "you can keep going at the same per-token rate". Paid plans get an email at 90% of included usage.

Cloud modelInput, per million tokensOutput, per million tokens
gpt-oss:20b$0.07$0.30
gemma4$0.14$0.40
glm-5.3-flash$0.15$0.50
deepseek-v4.1-flash$0.30 ($0.15 off-peak)$1.20 ($0.60 off-peak)
glm-5.3$1.40$4.40
kimi-k3$3.00$15.00

To put $60 in context: a million input tokens plus a million output tokens on gpt-oss:20b costs $0.37, while the same usage on kimi-k3 costs $18. Off-peak rates on the DeepSeek models apply "outside 12:00 and 18:00 UTC on weekdays and all day on weekends", which for UK users means evenings, mornings and weekends.

If you subscribed before 31 August 2026, the old Pro and Max plans had "5-hour or weekly limits" rather than a credit pool, and you stay on that plan until you change billing cycle or tier. Subscriptions "automatically renew unless cancelled before the renewal date"; cancel from account settings.

Where your data goes: what Ollama actually promises

The marketing line is short: "Zero data retention, hosted in the US and Europe". The pricing page FAQ adds that "Prompt or response data is never logged or trained on", and the homepage says "Your prompts are never stored or trained on." Those are strong claims, so it is worth reading what the legal documents say.

The privacy policy (last updated March 2026) says: "When using cloud-hosted models, we process this content transiently to provide the Service and this content is not stored beyond the time required to fulfill the request. We implement technical measures designed to minimize retention of prompt and response content. We do not use your inputs or outputs to train any AI models." The terms (last updated May 2026) repeat the training point: "We do not use your inputs or outputs to train AI models."

Notice the wording. "Transiently" and "designed to minimize retention" is a little softer than "zero", which is normal for a legal document but worth knowing if you are writing a vendor assessment. What Ollama does keep is account data, payment data (via Stripe), "limited device and usage metadata (such as app version and request counts)", IP address, country and model download metadata. Your usage dashboard shows the model, tokens and cost of each request, so request metadata is retained even though content is not.

On location: "Ollama hosts models and compute resources primarily in the United States. To serve global demand, we may route to Europe for additional capacity." The models themselves run with "NVIDIA Cloud Providers (NCPs)", and Ollama says "we require no logging, no training, and zero data retention policies in place" from those partners. I found no setting in the documentation that lets you pin a request to the US or to Europe. One more location appears outside the policy: in its 1 September 2026 post on X, Ollama said it also uses Singapore for a limited set of Qwen models. No Qwen model was in the cloud list on 22 October 2026, but if you handle personal data, check where a model is hosted before you use it.

The legal frame is Californian: the terms are "governed by the laws of the State of California", with arbitration in San Francisco and a class action waiver. Ollama Inc. names itself as data controller, contactable at hello@ollama.com.

Cloud models vs local models: how to tell and how to choose

Four tells. On ollama.com, cloud models carry a green "cloud" badge, and the library can be filtered to cloud only. In the app or CLI, cloud models end in :cloud (gemma4:cloud) or the older -cloud suffix (gpt-oss:120b-cloud). In ollama ls, cloud models show a dash in the SIZE column because nothing was downloaded. And a cloud model will not run until you sign in; a local one never asks.

ollama ls

One naming trap: when you call ollama.com directly with an API key, you drop the tag and use the plain name from https://ollama.com/api/tags, such as gemma4:31b. The :cloud tag is only for the local app and CLI. The full list of commands is in the Ollama commands cheat sheet.

Which models are cloud? As of 22 October 2026 the cloud list includes beam, clef, deepseek-v4.1-flash (with the 1017 update Ollama announced on X on 17 October 2026), deepseek-v4-pro, gemma4, glm-5.3, glm-5.3-flash, glm-5.2, gpt-oss, kimi-k3, kimi-k2.7-code, kimi-k2.6, minimax-m3.1-flash, minimax-m3, minimax-m2.7, mistral-large-4, mistral-large-3, muse-spark-open, nemotron-3-nano, nemotron-3-super and nemotron-3-ultra. Some, such as gemma4 and gpt-oss, also have local versions. The giants do not fit on a Mac: Beam is 501 billion parameters and Ollama says Kimi K3 has 2.8 trillion. The models list shows which local models your Mac can run.

QuestionLocal modelCloud model
CostFree, unlimitedPer token, from included credits then purchased credits
Where the prompt goesStays on your MacOllama's servers in the US, sometimes Europe
Model sizeLimited by your memoryUp to trillion-parameter models
Context lengthDefault 4,096 tokens unless you raise it"Full context length", up to 1M on several models
Works offlineYesNo
Account neededNoYes, one per person
Best forAnything personal, confidential or offlineA model your Mac cannot hold, a long context, or an agent that runs for an hour

My rule: local for anything personal, confidential or offline, and cloud when the job needs a model your Mac cannot hold, a long context, or an agent that will chew through tokens for an hour. The private AI guide covers the local side in depth.

Ollama's web search is a hosted API, not a browser on your Mac. A search is a request to https://ollama.com/api/web_search with a query string and an optional max_results (default 5, maximum 10). It returns titles, URLs and content snippets. A companion endpoint, https://ollama.com/api/web_fetch, takes a URL and returns that page's text and links. Both need an API key, and "A free Ollama account is required."

So what leaves your machine is the search query (or the URL you fetch), your API key and the usual request metadata. Your conversation does not go with it, unless the model asking is itself a cloud model. One subtlety: when a local model uses search as a tool, the model writes the query and may fold details from your prompt into it. If you are chatting about a client's contract, the query might contain the client's name.

Search is "included with a free Ollama account, with much higher rate limits available by upgrading", but the free limit is not published. Turning cloud off, below, turns web search off too.

How to switch Ollama Cloud off

Ollama's FAQ gives two methods, and either puts Ollama into "local only mode". The documented cost is clear: "By turning off Ollama's cloud features, you will lose the ability to use Ollama's cloud models and web search."

  1. Create or edit the file ~/.ollama/server.json so that it contains the setting below.
  2. Quit and reopen Ollama (the FAQ says "Restart Ollama after changing configuration").
  3. Check ~/.ollama/logs/server.log: the FAQ says the logs will show "Ollama cloud disabled: true".
{
  "disable_ollama_cloud": true
}

The alternative is an environment variable, which suits Linux servers and Docker where you already manage settings that way:

OLLAMA_NO_CLOUD=1

On a Mac the app reads environment variables set with launchctl setenv, so the server.json route is simpler for most people. If you only want to stop being signed in, ollama signout does that. Neither option stops the app downloading models or updates from ollama.com; it only closes the door on cloud inference and search. If something misbehaves afterwards, the troubleshooting page covers logs and settings.

Is Ollama (the app) safe?

By the usual tests, the Ollama app is safe. The code is open source under the MIT licence at github.com/ollama/ollama, with 183.8k stars on 22 October 2026, so anyone can read what the app does.

The privacy policy is unambiguous about local use: "We do not collect, store, transmit, or have access to your prompts, responses, model interactions, or other content you process locally. Your data stays on your machine." By default the server listens only on 127.0.0.1 port 11434, so other devices on your network cannot reach it unless you change OLLAMA_HOST.

Who owns it: Ollama Inc., founded by Jeffrey Morgan (CEO) and Michael Chiang, who met at university and previously built Kitematic, acquired by Docker in 2015 and turned into Docker Desktop. The company went through Y Combinator's Winter 2021 batch; YC lists it in San Francisco and the July 2026 funding press release is datelined Palo Alto, California. On 9 July 2026 Ollama announced it had raised $88M in total, including a $65M Series B led by Theory Ventures with Benchmark, 8VC and Y Combinator.

What the app does send: model downloads from ollama.com, automatic updates on macOS and Windows, sign-in if you use it, cloud or search requests if you use those, and the usage metadata described above. Download only from ollama.com or the GitHub releases page. Whether a given model is trustworthy is a separate question, covered in is it safe to run Chinese AI models on your Mac.

UK GDPR notes for using it at work

Running Ollama with local models raises no UK GDPR transfer question: the data never leaves the building. Ollama Cloud models do, because you are sending personal data to Ollama Inc., a US company, which makes it a restricted transfer under UK GDPR.

The ICO's position, as of its page updated 30 July 2026, is that the United States has only partial adequacy, which "Only covers personal information transferred under the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework", and that "You must only make a restricted transfer to a US business that has an active status on the DPF list."

Ollama's privacy policy says "Data may be transferred to and processed in the United States. Where required by law, we use appropriate safeguards for international transfers", without naming the safeguard. I could not confirm from the Data Privacy Framework site whether Ollama Inc. is certified, and I found no data processing agreement on ollama.com as of 22 October 2026. If Ollama is not on the DPF list, the ICO says you "must put in place appropriate safeguards or rely on an exception", such as the IDTA or Addendum, and complete a transfer risk assessment first.

The European routing is less of a problem: the ICO confirms "All the countries in the European Economic Area (EEA) have full adequacy". You cannot choose that route, though. The Enterprise plan offers "Custom security questionnaires", which is the place to ask these questions formally.

In practice: first, default to local models for anything containing personal data. Second, if you need cloud for client data, get Ollama's transfer mechanism and a processing agreement in writing before the first request. Third, on shared office Macs, set disable_ollama_cloud so nobody drifts into cloud by accident. The broader rules are in AI agents and UK GDPR.

What people say on Reddit and X

These are individual users' opinions, not tested findings. I read each original post in full on 22 October 2026.

Ollama announced the switch to per-token pricing on X on 1 September 2026:

  • On value: "Although I haven't done an exact comparison with DeepSeek's official API yet, this feels ridiculously cheap." - a user in r/ollama on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, September 2026 thread
  • On zero data retention: "Plus, I feel much better having the trust that my data isn't being used for training." - the same r/ollama user; a user in another September 2026 thread disagreed: "ZDR is a myth, you always have to trust your provider."
  • On the switch to credits: "Based on whose feedback? This is an insane reduction of Value." - one user on X, replying to @ollama's 1 September 2026 pricing post
  • On speed: "it is like 10x slower" - a user in r/ollama who moved from Ollama's old Pro plan to OpenCode Go, October 2026 thread; another user there called Ollama "pretty good".
  • On cloud models that look local: "Is hosting locally not unlimited requests? How could I have misconfigured this?" - a user in r/ollama who hit a weekly limit on a MiniMax model they thought was running locally, March 2026 thread
  • On the free tier: "on free tier I used my entire 5 hour and 40% of weekly in a single prompt" - a user in r/ollama, under the limits that applied before September, May 2026 thread

The praise is mostly about cheap tokens on models such as DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and about trusting Ollama with data. The complaints cluster around the move to credits announced on 31 August 2026, which heavy users on the old plans say buys far less, and around limits that are hard to predict. If you are starting fresh, you can at least see what each request cost in your account.

Frequently asked questions

Is Ollama Cloud free?

Ollama Cloud has a Free plan at $0, as of 22 October 2026. It includes a small monthly allowance of starter credits for a set of starter models, with one request at a time. Ollama does not publish the size of that allowance. You can buy usage credits on the Free plan to unlock every cloud model with no subscription, and Ollama runs occasional limited-time free models such as Beam and, for three days from 20 October 2026, MiniMax M3.1 Flash. Running models locally is always free and unlimited.

How much does Ollama Pro cost in the UK?

Ollama Pro is $20 a month or $200 a year, as of 22 October 2026. In pounds that is about £15 a month or £150 a year at 1 USD = 0.75 GBP. It includes $60 of usage credits each month and three concurrent requests. The price is shown in dollars with no mention of VAT, and the terms say you are responsible for applicable taxes, so check the Stripe checkout total.

Does Ollama send my data to the internet?

Not when you run a local model. Ollama's privacy policy says it does not collect, store, transmit or have access to prompts or responses you process locally. The app does contact ollama.com to download models and updates, and if you use cloud models or web search, those prompts, queries and responses go to Ollama's servers, where Ollama says they are processed transiently and never logged or trained on.

Does Ollama run offline?

Yes, once a model is downloaded. Local models run entirely on your Mac with no account and no connection. Cloud models and web search need the internet and a signed-in account. If you want to guarantee nothing ever goes to the cloud, set disable_ollama_cloud to true in the server.json file and restart Ollama.

Is Ollama safe to install on a Mac?

Ollama is open source under the MIT licence with 183.8k GitHub stars as of 22 October 2026, so its code is public and widely reviewed. By default it listens only on your own machine at 127.0.0.1 port 11434. Download it from ollama.com or the official GitHub releases, and treat the safety of individual models as a separate question.

Who owns Ollama?

Ollama is made by Ollama Inc., a Californian company founded by Jeffrey Morgan, the CEO, and Michael Chiang, who previously built Kitematic and sold it to Docker in 2015. It went through Y Combinator in Winter 2021. In July 2026 it announced $88M in total funding, including a $65M Series B led by Theory Ventures, with Benchmark, 8VC and Y Combinator also investing.

How many people use Ollama Cloud?

Ollama has not published how many people use its cloud or how many pay for a plan. It says 8.9 million developers use Ollama every month, as of 9 July 2026, and that cloud token volume has more than doubled every month on average. On ollama.com the most downloaded cloud-only model, minimax-m2.7, showed 2.4M downloads on 22 October 2026, though downloads count pulls rather than people.

How do I disable Ollama Cloud?

Create or edit the file ~/.ollama/server.json so it contains "disable_ollama_cloud": true, then restart Ollama. Alternatively set the environment variable OLLAMA_NO_CLOUD=1 and restart. Ollama's server log will then show Ollama cloud disabled: true, and both cloud models and web search stop working until you turn it back on.

What is the difference between gemma4 and gemma4:cloud?

gemma4 downloads the model to your Mac and runs it there for free, using your memory. gemma4:cloud runs the 31 billion parameter version on Ollama's servers, needs a signed-in account, uses your credits at $0.14 per million input tokens and $0.40 per million output tokens, and sends your prompt to the cloud. In the ollama ls list, the cloud version shows a dash where the size would be.

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