No authentication is required when accessing Ollama's API locally via http://localhost:11434.

Authentication is required for the following:

• Running cloud models via ollama.com
• Publishing models
• Downloading private models

Ollama supports two authentication methods:

• Signing in: sign in from your local installation, and Ollama will automatically take care of authenticating requests to ollama.com when running commands
• API keys: API keys for programmatic access to ollama.com's API

Signing in

To sign in to ollama.com from your local installation of Ollama, run:

ollama signin

Once signed in, Ollama will automatically authenticate commands as required:

ollama run gpt-oss:120b-cloud

Similarly, when accessing a local API endpoint that requires cloud access, Ollama will automatically authenticate the request:

curl http://localhost:11434/api/generate -d '{
  "model": "gpt-oss:120b-cloud",
  "prompt": "Why is the sky blue?"
}'

API keys

For direct access to ollama.com's API served at https://ollama.com/api, authentication via API keys is required.

First, create an API key, then set the OLLAMA_API_KEY environment variable:

export OLLAMA_API_KEY=your_api_key

Then use the API key in the Authorization header:

curl https://ollama.com/api/generate \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $OLLAMA_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "model": "gpt-oss:120b",
    "prompt": "Why is the sky blue?",
    "stream": false
  }'

API keys don't currently expire, however you can revoke them at any time in your API keys settings.