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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Ollama is a simple, locally-run AI tool that’s surprisingly powerful.
- This app offers advantages you might not expect.
- On top of being free and private, it’s open-source as well.
Ollama may not be a major name in the AI world, but it deserves far more attention than it gets. This downloadable AI solution provides several perks that services like ChatGPT simply can’t match, and those perks are precisely why I’ve abandoned traditional platforms for good.
I’ve written about Ollama many times over the past year, so I figured it was the right moment to lay out exactly why I prefer this app over everything else out there.
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(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET’s parent company, filed a lawsuit in April 2025 against OpenAI, claiming it violated Ziff Davis copyrights during the training and operation of its AI systems.)
What is Ollama?
Before diving into why you should care, let’s cover what it actually is.
Ollama is a free, open-source program you can download and set up on your computer (Linux, macOS, or Windows). It lets you run large language models (LLMs) right on your own hardware. The main thing to keep in mind is processing power. AI needs a decent amount of computational muscle to perform well. That doesn’t rule out midrange machines entirely, but on lower-end hardware, you’ll experience slower performance, and juggling multiple tasks while it works through your requests may prove difficult.
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That said, if your computer has an Nvidia GPU, things will move considerably faster — even on mid-tier setups — because it shifts most of the workload to the GPU, letting the CPU handle everything else. For a smooth Ollama experience, aim for at minimum:
- CPU: Any current-generation processor
- System RAM: 16 GB
- GPU (Recommended): Nvidia with 8 GB or more VRAM, or an Apple Silicon Mac (M1/M2/M3) with 16 GB or more unified memory for built-in GPU acceleration
Ollama features a clean, straightforward graphical interface for both macOS and Windows, though it’s fully operable from the command line as well. On Linux, you can stick with the CLI directly, or choose from several GUI options like Alpaca and Msty.
There’s an impressive variety of LLMs available through Ollama. The model library is enormous — you’ll find DeepSeek, Gemma, Qwen, Mistral, Gpt-OSS, Llama, and dozens of others to explore.
Now that the what is covered, let’s dig into why Ollama deserves a spot on your machine.
1. It won’t cost you a dime
Ollama is completely free. From the day I downloaded it, I haven’t spent a cent on the software or any of the models. Just install Ollama, grab a model, and you’re ready to go. No fees for the app, no fees for the models, no usage charges of any kind.
Free — plain and simple, now and always.
And since it’s open-source, you get that peace of mind as a bonus.
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2. Your data stays yours
This matters a lot to me. I refuse to use commercial, for-profit AI platforms because I know my prompts and the generated responses could be accessed or exploited by outside parties. The companies running these services can harvest your data and repurpose it however they want, and that’s a line I’m not willing to cross. It’s not that I’m typing in personal details into AI (I mostly rely on it for research), but I’d rather not have every query tracked and stitched together into a profile about me.
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Just the way I’d expect my browsers to respect my privacy, I demand the same from my AI tool, and Ollama is genuinely the only way I’ve found to guarantee that.
3. It won’t drain the power grid
You’ve probably heard that AI gulps down enormous quantities of electricity. A recent report from the International Data Center Authority (ICDA) found that data centers account for roughly 6% of all electricity consumed in the United States. “The US is by far the world’s largest data center location, with 43% of global consumption. Data centers consume 29.2 GW of electricity in the US, and now account for 6% of the nation’s electricity usage.”
A United Nations report further expands on the environmental risks tied to large-scale AI systems. “Most AI servers are housed in data centers, which generate electronic waste and may harbor toxic substances such as mercury and lead. Data centers also demand vast quantities of water during construction and for cooling the hardware housed inside them.”
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By running Ollama locally on my own machine, I sidestep contributing to that problem entirely. You could go a step further and run it on a laptop, operating strictly off battery — no wall outlet needed.
Ollama is eco-friendly and places zero additional burden on the electrical grid.
4. You get to pick your AI model
With services like ChatGPT, your choices are limited to whatever models the company offers. Ollama flips that on its head — you have a huge library of LLMs at your fingertips. You can install several models side by side and switch between them depending on the task at hand.
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That kind of flexibility simply isn’t available from most commercial AI providers.
5. It works across your home network
I’ve got a single Ollama instance running on a server that sits on my local network. From there, I can connect via a web interface or pair it with a desktop GUI app, which means neither my laptop nor my desktop has to bear the processing load. This setup works wonderfully because shifting the AI workload to a dedicated server means less capable machines won’t choke on heavy queries. The best part? I only need one Ollama installation to serve every device on my network.
6. Works completely offline
Imagine the internet goes down, or you’re out in a remote area with no cell reception or Wi-Fi — but you still need AI for some reason. With a cloud-based third-party AI service, you’re simply stuck. With Ollama installed on your laptop, you’re in great shape because it doesn’t need an internet connection at all. That also opens the door to running Ollama on an air-gapped machine for an extra layer of security and privacy.
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It’s a win-win situation from every angle.
I’d strongly encourage you to give a local installation of Ollama a shot. Getting started is far easier than most people assume (think of it as installing any standard program on macOS or Windows), and it delivers flexibility, security, and environmental responsibility — all at no cost.
Who wouldn’t want all of that?
