Best Ollama Cloud Alternatives for Indie Hackers in 2026

Ollama Cloud used to be the easy answer for running open models without a GPU. Pay $20, use it heavily, and the limits reset every few hours. That's gone. At the start of September 2026 Ollama moved its paid plans to usage credits, and the pricing page now spells out the deal. Pro is $20 a month with $60 of credit. Max is $100 with $300. Team is $500 with $1,000 shared. Every token is billed at the model's published per-million rate, and unused credit doesn't roll over.

Some users aren't happy. A GitHub issue opened September 25 points out that the usage API still reports the old session and weekly limits and can't show your credit balance, so you can't track spend from code.

For light users, Pro is still a good deal. Prices below were checked on September 29, 2026.

Quick Verdict

Should You Leave Ollama Cloud at All?

Do the math before you move anything. Ollama's per-token rates match the market. GLM-5.3 costs $1.40 in and $4.40 out per million tokens on Ollama, and the exact same on Together's pricing page. So a Pro plan that turns $20 into $60 of tokens is effectively a 3x discount, as long as you use the credit.

The problem is heavy users. A coding agent on Kimi K2.6 ($0.95 in, $4.00 out on Ollama) spends $60 on roughly 40 million input tokens and 5.5 million output tokens. Coding agents re-send their context on every turn, so input tokens pile up fast. After that, Ollama bills extra usage at the same rates, and there are cheaper rates elsewhere.

DeepInfra

DeepInfra was the cheapest hosted option I checked, by a wide margin on some models. gpt-oss-120b is $0.037 per million input tokens and $0.17 output. Ollama charges $0.15 and $0.60 for the same model. Kimi K2.6 is $0.75 in and $3.50 out, and DeepSeek V4 Flash is $0.09 in and $0.18 out.

It's plain pay-per-token with an OpenAI-compatible API. No subscription, nothing to waste at month end.

Who shouldn't use it: anyone who wants the newest model the day it drops. The catalog is broad but not every model Ollama serves is listed (I couldn't find GLM-5.3 or MiniMax on the pricing page).

Pick this if you blew through your $60 credit and just want the same open models for less.

OpenRouter

OpenRouter is one API key in front of models from many providers, open and closed. Per its FAQ, inference is billed at the provider's own rate with no markup. You pay 5.5% (minimum $0.80) when buying credits by card, and free models allow 50 requests a day, or 1,000 once you've bought $10 of credits.

The real strength is fallback. If one provider for Kimi is down or slow, OpenRouter routes to another.

Who shouldn't use it: anyone uneasy about ownership changes. Stripe agreed to acquire OpenRouter in August with no public commitments on pricing, which the OpenRouter alternatives post covers.

Pick this if you want to mix open models with closed ones like Claude or GPT without juggling keys.

Groq

Groq runs models on its own chips, and its model docs list gpt-oss-120b at around 500 tokens per second and gpt-oss-20b at around 1,000. Prices are $0.15 in and $0.60 out for the 120b, which matches Ollama. The Free plan allows 30 requests a minute and 200,000 tokens a day on gpt-oss-120b.

That speed changes how agents feel.

Who shouldn't use it: anyone who needs Kimi, GLM or DeepSeek. The production model list is short, and Llama 3.3 70B is enterprise-only with contact pricing.

Pick this if latency matters more than which model you run.

Together AI

Together AI has almost the same catalog and almost the same prices as Ollama Cloud. gpt-oss-120b is $0.15 and $0.60, DeepSeek V4 Pro is $1.32 and $3.96, and MiniMax M3 is actually cheaper at $0.30 in and $1.20 out (Ollama charges $0.60 and $2.40).

So why switch? You pay only for what you use, with no monthly credit expiring. And Together does fine-tuning and dedicated endpoints, which Ollama Cloud doesn't.

Who shouldn't use it: light users. Paying list price per token is worse than Ollama Pro's $20-for-$60 as long as you stay under the credit.

Pick this if you'll outgrow shared inference and want to fine-tune later. The Hugging Face inference alternatives post compares Together with more GPU hosts.

Ollama, Locally

The same Ollama you already use runs models on your own machine for free. gpt-oss:20b is a 14 GB download that runs on a machine with 16 GB of memory. The 120b needs a single 80 GB GPU, which almost nobody has on a desk.

No credits, no rate limits, no data leaving your laptop.

Who shouldn't use it: anyone who needs frontier-sized models or runs agents while traveling on a thin laptop. Small models write worse code, and it's slow on older hardware. The local AI coding tools roundup covers the editors that pair with it.

Pick this for private data, offline work and cheap experiments.

How Do You Choose?

Start with your bill. If your spend fits inside $60 of credit, stay on Pro. Nothing here beats three times your money.

If you're paying overage every month, move the heavy agent traffic to DeepInfra and keep Pro for everything else. That split is where the savings are. Groq wins if you're waiting on responses more than paying for them, and OpenRouter wins if you want Claude and open models in one place.

And if you're choosing between per-token APIs and renting your own GPU, the per-token vs GPU guide has the break-even math.

Final Recommendation

Light user? Stay on Ollama Pro. Heavy agent user paying overage? DeepInfra, same models at a fraction of the price. Latency-sensitive? Groq. Want one key for everything? OpenRouter. Privacy first and a 16 GB machine? Run Ollama locally.

Found a better option? Let me know on Twitter @devtoolpicks.