Ollama

Verified

Run open LLMs locally with one command.

Ollama makes it trivial to download and run open models locally with a simple CLI and an OpenAI-compatible local API. It is the most popular way to run LLMs on a laptop or workstation for development.

License

Open source (MIT)

Deployment

Self-hosted

Pricing

Free and open-source; runs on your own hardware.

SDKs / languages

Any (local API), Python, JavaScript

Founded

2023

Strengths

Dead-simple local setup
Great for dev and prototyping
OpenAI-compatible local server

Limitations

Not aimed at high-scale serving
Single-node focus

Alternatives

Baseten

Deploy and scale model inference in production.

Fireworks AI

Fast managed inference for open models and fine-tunes.

Groq

Ultra-low-latency inference on custom LPU hardware.

LM Studio

Desktop app to run local LLMs with a GUI and local server.

Modal

Serverless GPU compute for AI workloads.

Replicate

Run and deploy any model via a simple API.

Compare all inference & model serving →

Facts verified 19 July 2026. Neutral summary, not an endorsement; verify current details with the vendor.