Does Ollama work offline? — yes, completely

Does Ollama work offline? Yes — completely.

Once you have downloaded a model with ollama pull, Ollama works with no internet connection at all. You can disconnect your Wi-Fi, unplug your ethernet cable, or enable Airplane mode — Ollama will continue generating text without any errors or degradation.

This is because Ollama runs the entire language model locally on your hardware. There is no server-side component, no API call to the cloud, and no telemetry sent during inference. The model weights sit on your disk and are loaded into your GPU or RAM when you run a prompt.

The only things that require an internet connection

How to verify Ollama works offline

• 1

  Pull a model while connected

  cmd.exe

  C:\> ollama pull mistral

  success
• 2

  Disconnect from the internet

  Turn off Wi-Fi or unplug ethernet. Enable Airplane mode if you want to be thorough.

• 3

  Run the model

  cmd.exe — no internet

  C:\> ollama run mistral

  >>> Explain quantum computing

  Quantum computing uses quantum mechanical phenomena...

  # Works perfectly with no internet

Using Ollama in air-gapped environments

To deploy Ollama in an environment with no internet access at all (corporate air-gap, secure facility, offline lab), you can transfer the installer and model files manually:

• 1

  On a connected machine, download everything

  cmd.exe — connected machine

  # Install Ollama and pull the model:

  C:\> ollama pull llama3

  success
• 2

  Copy files to the air-gapped machine

  Transfer two things via USB drive or internal network:

  • Installer: OllamaSetup.exe
  • Model files: the entire C:\Users\YourName\.ollama folder
• 3

  On the air-gapped machine, install and restore

  cmd.exe — air-gapped machine

  # Run the installer, then copy the .ollama folder

  # to C:\Users\YourName\.ollama

  span class="t-p">C:\> ollama list

  llama3:latest 4.7 GB

  C:\> ollama run llama3

  >>> Ready

Block Ollama from ever accessing the internet

For maximum control, add a Windows Firewall outbound rule that prevents Ollama from making any outbound connections:

Offline questions