Use Local LLM with Cursor and Ollama

#cursor #ollama #llm

requirements

Cursor is installed on your machine
Ollama is installed on your machine, and you have a model
ngrok is installed on your machine, and you have an ngrok account

Step1. Install `Cursor`

Go to https://www.cursor.com/ and download Cursor, then install it on your machine.

Step2. Install `Ollama`

Go to https://ollama.com/ and download Ollama, then install it on your machine.

Step3. Create an ngrok account and install ngrok

Go to https://ngrok.com/ and download ngrok, then install it on your machine.
Then set up ngrok.

Step4. Download(pull) a model

In this article, we'll use deepseek-r1 model
https://ollama.com/library/deepseek-r1
Open the Terminal app

# 7B-model
ollama pull deepseek-r1:latest

Step5. Enable CORS and run ngrok

# macOS & Linux
export OLLAMA_ORIGINS="*"

# If you are using Windows
set OLLAMA_ORIGINS="*"

ngrok http 11434 --host-header="localhost:11434"

Step6. Set OpenAI API Key

Put the model name you pulled (in this case, the model is deepseek-r1:latest) and click Add model
Put Ollama in API key
Put the URL you get from ngrok command + /v1 The URL looks like https://ngrok_something/v1
Click Save

Step7. Verify Ollama config

We are almost there.
Before clicking Verify button, we need to unselect all non-local models. So in this case, deepseek-r1:latest is the only selected model.
Then click Verify button.

Step8. Use a local model

This is the final step. Open Cursor and Chat (Ctrl/Cmd + l). Make sure that you select the model you added in Step 6 and send a prompt.

Top comments (3)

Dave • Aug 19

What subscription of cursor do you use?

On Pro, all i get is The model [WHATEVER_USED] does not work with your current plan or api key. error message.

My model responds fine in terminal for direct and ngrok/cloudtunnel testing, but not in cursor.

I think cursor does not like Pro subscription users switching to a free model. It also complains a lot about exceeding limits if I add anthropic or openai api key to use it directly. Seems they have found a money machine, and have ensured users keep paying through them.