Ollama

Ollama (https://ollama.com/) is a developer-focused platform for running, customizing, and deploying open language models both locally and in the cloud. Designed for engineers, researchers, and product teams who need control over model selection, performance, and data privacy, Ollama provides a unified experience via a lightweight CLI, desktop app, REST API, and language SDKs.

You can download native clients for macOS, Windows, and Linux or connect programmatically via libraries like ollama-python, ollama-js, and community SDKs. At its core, Ollama makes it simple to pull models from an extensible model library, import GGUF or safetensors artifacts, and package model variants with a Modelfile. Modelfiles let you pin parameters, inject system messages, and create reproducible custom models that behave predictably in production and experimentation.

Run models locally when you need offline inference and maximum privacy, or use Ollama Cloud to access datacenter-grade GPUs, larger models, and faster response times while maintaining a privacy-first promise: Ollama does not retain queries in cloud service logs. The platform supports multimodal models, model management commands (pull, run, create, rm, cp), and a REST API for generate and chat endpoints, enabling integration into web apps, backend services, and robotics.

Community integrations span web UIs, VS Code and terminal plugins, observability tools, and RAG workflows via LangChain, LlamaIndex, and other connectors. Ollama also provides clear hardware guidance and system requirements for running popular model sizes, helping teams plan capacity for 7B, 13B, and larger models. What makes Ollama unique is the balance between local-first control and optional cloud scale.

Teams get developer-grade tooling for prompt customization, reproducible Modelfiles, an active open-source community on GitHub and Discord, and the option to burst into Ollama Cloud for performance and larger-model capabilities. Whether you are experimenting with Gemma, Llama variants, or custom imported GGUF models, Ollama unifies model lifecycle, deployment, and observability in a privacy-conscious workflow.