Streaming - Ollama

Certain API endpoints stream responses by default, such as /api/generate. These responses are provided in the newline-delimited JSON format (i.e. the application/x-ndjson content type). For example:

{"model":"gemma4","created_at":"2025-10-26T17:15:24.097767Z","response":"That","done":false}
{"model":"gemma4","created_at":"2025-10-26T17:15:24.109172Z","response":"'","done":false}
{"model":"gemma4","created_at":"2025-10-26T17:15:24.121485Z","response":"s","done":false}
{"model":"gemma4","created_at":"2025-10-26T17:15:24.132802Z","response":" a","done":false}
{"model":"gemma4","created_at":"2025-10-26T17:15:24.143931Z","response":" fantastic","done":false}
{"model":"gemma4","created_at":"2025-10-26T17:15:24.155176Z","response":" question","done":false}
{"model":"gemma4","created_at":"2025-10-26T17:15:24.166576Z","response":"!","done":true, "done_reason": "stop"}

Disabling streaming

Streaming can be disabled by providing {"stream": false} in the request body for any endpoint that support streaming. This will cause responses to be returned in the application/json format instead:

{"model":"gemma4","created_at":"2025-10-26T17:15:24.166576Z","response":"That's a fantastic question!","done":true}

When to use streaming vs non-streaming

Streaming (default):

Real-time response generation
Lower perceived latency
Better for long generations

Non-streaming:

Simpler to process
Better for short responses, or structured outputs
Easier to handle in some applications