How to Get an Ollama API Key for Free

In short: Ollama Cloud has a Free plan with an API key. Sign up at ollama.com, open Keys and click Create API key. The Free plan includes a starter amount of usage each month on 7 cloud models: Beam, Gemma 4 31B, gpt-oss 120B, gpt-oss 20B and three NVIDIA Nemotron 3 models. No credit card is needed. The base URL https://ollama.com/v1 works in apps made for OpenAI.

What you need

• An Ollama account at ollama.com. New accounts start on the Free plan.
• A computer. Windows, Mac or Linux all work. The Ollama app is not needed to use the API.
• Nothing to pay: free usage comes with the account and refills every month.

Step 1: Check your free usage

Sign in and open Dashboard. Free usage (box 1) shows how much of this month's free allowance is left and when it refills. Create API key (box 2) is at the top right.

Step 2: Open the Keys page

Click Keys in the left menu, then Create API key (box 1).

Step 3: Name the key and create it

Type a name you will recognise later, such as my-free-key (box 1), and click Create (box 2).

Copy the key as soon as it appears and keep it somewhere safe. Afterwards the Keys list shows only the first few characters of it (box 1).

Keep the key private:

• Anyone who has your key can use your free allowance.
• Never paste it into a website, a public code repository or a screenshot.
• If it leaks, click the bin icon next to it and create a new one.

Step 4: See which models are free

Open Usage in the left menu. The box under Usage breakdown (box 1) lists the cloud models the free usage works with.

All seven answered on a Free plan key on 26 October 2026. Other cloud models, such as DeepSeek, GLM, Kimi and MiniMax, answer with error 402 and the message "This model is not in the Free plan".

Step 5: Know your free limits

Ollama does not publish the free allowance as a number of requests or tokens. The pricing page has the plan details. Running models on your own computer with the Ollama app is unlimited and does not use this allowance.

Step 6: Send your first request (no programming)

Open a command window. On Windows, press the Start key, type PowerShell and open it. On a Mac, open Terminal. Put your key in place of YOUR_API_KEY.

Windows (PowerShell):

$env:OLLAMA_API_KEY = "YOUR_API_KEY"
$body = '{"model":"gpt-oss:120b","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Explain how AI works in a few words"}]}'
$r = Invoke-RestMethod -Method Post -Uri "https://ollama.com/v1/chat/completions" -Headers @{ Authorization = "Bearer $env:OLLAMA_API_KEY" } -ContentType "application/json" -Body $body
$r.choices[0].message.content

Mac or Linux (Terminal):

export OLLAMA_API_KEY="YOUR_API_KEY"
curl https://ollama.com/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $OLLAMA_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "gpt-oss:120b",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Explain how AI works in a few words"}]
  }'

You get a short answer back, and the request shows on the Usage page.

Step 7: Use it from Python

Ollama's OpenAI-compatible API works with OpenAI's Python library:

pip install openai

import os
from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(base_url="https://ollama.com/v1", api_key=os.environ["OLLAMA_API_KEY"])
reply = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="gpt-oss:120b",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Explain how AI works in a few words"}],
)
print(reply.choices[0].message.content)

Step 8: Use it in an app made for OpenAI

In any app that asks for an OpenAI key, change three settings:

When something goes wrong

Words to know

• API key: the password an app uses to call Ollama's models. See what is an API key.
• Cloud model: a model that runs on Ollama's servers, not on your computer.
• Base URL: the address an app sends its requests to.
• Third-party API key: a key from a service that runs models made by other companies, such as Google's Gemma or OpenAI's gpt-oss.
• Token: a piece of a word; the unit models read and write. See tokens and context windows.

More free AI API keys

Ollama Cloud is one of the third-party services with a free tier. How to get AI API keys for free lists each one with its limit and source. For a free key with a daily request count, see how to get an OpenRouter API key for free.