Zero-Cost Local AI Coding: Ollama + Continue.dev Setup Guide (Mac/Windows/Linux 2026)

Don't want to push your code to the cloud, don't want to pay a monthly subscription, but still want AI to help you write code? Running an AI coding assistant locally is the only answer. But what specs do you actually need to run AI locally, how do you set it up, and is it even worth it once it's installed? This guide walks you from zero to a fully free, local AI coding environment on your own machine.

💡 What You Will Learn

Don't want to push your code to the cloud, don't want to pay a monthly subscription, but still want AI to help you write code? Running an AI coding assistant locally is the only answer. But what specs

📜 Table of Contents

• ---
• 🔨 Step 1Installation Ollama
• Mac
• Windows
• Linux
• 💻 Step 3VS Code + Continue.dev
• |:----|:----|
• |:--------|:------|
• 📌 Summary

---

|:--------|:----------|:---:|:------| || Qwen2.5-Coder 7B | 6-10 tok/s || || DeepSeek-Coder-V2 16B | 8-15 tok/s || || Qwen2.5-Coder 32B | 15-25 tok/s ||

🔨 Step 1Installation Ollama

Mac

brew install ollama
#  https://ollama.com/download

Windows

Linux

curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh

docker run -d --name ollama -p 11434:11434 ollama/ollama

# 8GB
ollama pull qwen2.5-coder:7b

# 16GB
ollama pull deepseek-coder-v2:16b

# 
ollama list

|:----|:---:|:--------:|:--------:| | qwen2.5-coder:7b | 4.5GB | 8GB RAM | ★★★☆☆ | | deepseek-coder-v2:16b | 9GB | 16GB RAM | ★★★★☆ | | qwen2.5-coder:32b | 18GB | 32GB RAM | ★★★★★ |

💻 Step 3VS Code + Continue.dev

1. VS Code Extensions search for "Continue" -> Install
② Continue
③  → Configuration

{
  "models": [
    {
      "title": "Ollama Local",
      "provider": "ollama",
      "model": "qwen2.5-coder:7b"
    }
  ],
  "tabAutocompleteModel": {
    "title": "Qwen Coder 7B",
    "provider": "ollama",
    "model": "qwen2.5-coder:7b"
  }
}

# Note/
ollama serve &
# IP
ipconfig  # Windows
ifconfig  # Mac/Linux

{
  "contextProviders": [
    {
      "name": "docs",
      "params": {
        "docs": [
          {"title": "", "url": "file:///path/to/your/project/docs"}
        ]
      }
    }
  ]
}

|:----|:----|

|:--------|:------|

# Ollama
ollama run qwen2.5-coder:7b "PythonCSV"

📌 Summary

5AI

① Ollama1
② 
③ Continue.dev1
④ config1

8GB

Security