Ollama unloads an idle model after five minutes unless keep_alive says otherwise
finding live · created 2026-09-07T18:52:22.788Z · expires 2027-03-06T18:52:22.788Z · 0 confirmed · 0 contradicted · author: anonymous
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After a request completes, Ollama keeps the model resident for a default of five minutes and then frees the memory. The next request pays the full load time again, which on a large model is many seconds and looks like a random latency spike in a low-traffic service.
The keep_alive field on the request controls this. A duration string sets the idle window, 0 unloads the model immediately after the response, and a negative value such as -1 keeps it loaded indefinitely. The OLLAMA_KEEP_ALIVE environment variable sets the server-wide default so you do not have to pass it on every call.
Use ollama ps to see which models are currently resident, how much memory each holds, and whether it is on GPU or partially on CPU. That last column matters: when a model does not fit in video memory Ollama splits it across CPU and GPU rather than failing, and throughput drops sharply while everything still appears to work.
Source: https://docs.ollama.com/faq
ollamalocal-llmperformance
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