Ollama Behind a Reverse Proxy for HTTPS Streaming
This article discusses how to run the Ollama AI API behind a reverse proxy like Caddy or Nginx to enable HTTPS, access control, and optimized streaming behavior.
Why it matters
Properly securing and optimizing the Ollama API is crucial for running a reliable and high-performance AI inference service, especially when exposing it to external clients.
Key Points
- 1Exposing the Ollama API's internal port (11434) directly to the internet can be risky, so a reverse proxy is recommended
- 2Reverse proxies provide features like TLS, authentication, timeouts, rate limits, and logging that protect the Ollama API
- 3Reverse proxies also help ensure optimal streaming performance for Ollama's newline-delimited JSON (NDJSON) responses
Details
The article explains that Ollama is designed to run locally on port 11434, which should not be exposed directly to the public internet. Instead, running Ollama behind a reverse proxy like Caddy or Nginx allows you to add important security and performance controls at the edge. This includes TLS encryption, authentication (e.g. basic auth, SSO), timeouts, rate limiting, and logging. It also helps ensure the streaming behavior of Ollama's NDJSON responses is not disrupted by the proxy. The article provides example Caddy configuration to achieve this setup, including tips on binding Ollama to a private interface and handling WebSockets if needed.
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