DEV CommunitySaturday · June 6, 2026FREE

What Is Ollama? The Complete Guide to Running LLMs Locally in 2026

Ollama is a tool for running large language models locally, emphasizing data privacy, offline capability, and zero per-token cost. It manages models like a package manager, pulling and versioning them from its registry. Users can run models such as gemma4 or qwen3 via terminal commands or an API at http://localhost:11434. Ollama supports private chatbots, coding assistants (e.g., Claude Code, OpenCode, Codex) through the ollama launch command, RAG systems with batch embedding, and agents for classification or summarization. A key feature is structured-output pipelines that constrain model output to a JSON schema, making it reliable for programmatic use. The workflow is straightforward: run a command, and Ollama downloads the model, loads it into GPU memory or system RAM, and provides a chat prompt.