Pick Ollama if
developers and privacy-sensitive teams who have RAM/VRAM and want Llama/Gemma/DeepSeek without a per-seat chat plan.
Read the Ollama pageOllama vs OpenAI Codex
Our take
Pick Ollama if you're a developer and privacy-sensitive teams who have RAM/VRAM and want Llama/Gemma/DeepSeek without a per-seat chat plan. Pick OpenAI Codex if you're a developer already on a ChatGPT plan who want one agent across desktop, CLI, and GitHub review. Skip Ollama if you're someone who wants a polished hosted chat with browsing and image gen and will not download a 4–70B weight file.
Best for
Ollama Keeping weights and prompts on hardware you control
OpenAI Codex A reviewable coding session on an OpenAI account
Free plan
Ollama $0 · no license fee. You pay electricity, disk, and GPU. The desktop app and CLI are free to download
OpenAI Codex $0 · /month. GPT-6 Luna at Standard speed in the desktop app (rollout)
Lowest paid
Ollama
OpenAI Codex Plus $20/mo
Next step up
Ollama
OpenAI Codex Business $25
Coding agent
Ollama Claude Code
OpenAI Codex Codex
Runs where
Ollama Local or hosted
OpenAI Codex Hosted
Watch out
Ollama Hardware is the bill
OpenAI Codex Codex and ChatGPT Work share the same usage pool
Last checked
Ollama 2026-10-19 · ollama.com
OpenAI Codex 2026-10-22 · learn.chatgpt.com/docs/pricing
Which one, then?
Pick OpenAI Codex if
developers already on a ChatGPT plan who want one agent across desktop, CLI, and GitHub review.
Read the OpenAI Codex page