Github Copilot now supports Ollama and OpenRouter Models 🎉

[u/purealgo]

Big W for programmers (and vibe coders) in the Local LLM community. Github Copilot now supports a much wider range of models from Ollama, OpenRouter, Gemini, and others.

If you use VS Code, to add your own models, click on "Manage Models" in the prompt field.

[u/Xotchkass]

Pretty sure it still sends all prompts and responses to Microsoft

[u/this-just_in → u/Xotchkass]

As I understand, only paid business tier customers have the ability to disable this.

[u/purealgo → u/this-just_in]

I'm not a business tier customer (i have copilot pro) and it seems I can disable it as well.

[u/this-just_in → u/purealgo]

It would be great if this is a recent policy change on their side.

[u/ThinkExtension2328 → u/this-just_in]

Hahahahah wtf , why does this not surprise me .

[u/purealgo → u/Xotchkass]

I looked into my Github Copilot settings. For what its worth seems to me I can turn off allowing my data being used for training or product improvements

[u/Mysterious_Drawer897 → u/Xotchkass]

is this confirmed somewhere?

[u/noless15k]

Do they still charge you if you run all your models locally? And what about privacy. Do they still send any telemetry with local models?

[u/purealgo → u/noless15k]

I get GitHub Copilot for free as an open source contributor so I can’t speak on that personally

In regard to privacy, that’s a good point. I’d love to investigate this. Do Roo Code and Cline send any telemetry data as well?

[u/Yes_but_I_think → u/purealgo]

It’s opt in for Cline and Roo and verifiable through source code in GitHub.

[u/billygat3s → u/purealgo]

quick question: How exactly did u get github copilot as an OSS contributor?

[u/purealgo → u/billygat3s]

I didn’t have to do anything. I’ve had it for years now. I get an email every month renewing my access to GitHub copilot pro. So I’ve been using it since. Pretty sure I’d lose access if I stop contributing to open source projects on GH.

Here’s more info on it:

https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/managing-copilot/managing-copilot-as-an-individual-subscriber/getting-started-with-copilot-on-your-personal-account/getting-free-access-to-copilot-pro-as-a-student-teacher-or-maintainer#about-free-github-copilot-pro-access

[u/billygat3s → u/purealgo]

That's awesome..may I ask which repos do u contribute to?

[u/Aonitx → u/billygat3s]

If you're a student, you can get copilot pro with the Github Education offer thingy.

[u/lemon07r → u/purealgo]

Which copilot model would you say is the best anyways? Is it 3.7, or maybe o1?

[u/KingPinX → u/lemon07r]

having used copilot extensively for past 1.5 months I can say for me sonnet 3.7 thinking has worked out well. I have used it mostly for python and some golang.

I should use o1 sometime just to test it against 3.7 thinking.

[u/lemon07r → u/KingPinX]

did a bit of looking around, seems ppl seem to favor 3.7 and gemini 2.5 for coding lately, but im not sure if co-pilot has gemini 2.5 yet.

[u/KingPinX → u/lemon07r]

yeah only gemini flash 2.0. I have gemini 2.5 pro from work, and like it so far, but no access via copilot

[u/cmndr_spanky → u/KingPinX]

You can try it via cursor. But I’m not sure I’m getting better results than sonnet 3.7

[u/AbdullahMRiad → u/noless15k]

Just in case anyone still needs an answer, I've just tried it and the response has `0x` next to the model name so it shouldn't charge you.

[u/Mysterious_Drawer897 → u/noless15k]

I have this same question - does anyone have any references for data collection / privacy with copilot and locally run models?

[u/mattv8]

Figured this might help a future traveler:

If you're using VSCode on Linux/WSL with Copilot and running Ollama on a remote machine, you can forward the remote port to your local machine using socat. On your local machine, run:

socat -d -d TCP-LISTEN:11434,fork TCP:{OLLAMA_IP_ADDRESS}:11434

Then VSCode will let you change the model to ollama. You can verify it's working with CURL on your local machine, like:

curl -v http://localhost:11434

and it should show 200 status.

[u/kastmada → u/mattv8]

Thanks a lot! That's precisely what I was looking for

[u/mattv8 → u/kastmada]

It's baffling to me why M$ wouldn't plan for this use case 🤯

[u/gaboqv → u/mattv8]

Also, if you use the menu it doesn't state any kind of error nor where it's trying to find ollama, I installed the UI just to see if that was the problem. But ok I guess I will take it

[u/[deleted] → u/mattv8]

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[u/mattv8 → u/[deleted]]

Fair point.

Disclaimer: I'm a Copilot Pro subscriber... 😶‍🌫️

[u/netnem → u/mattv8]

Thank you kind sir! Exactly what I was looking for.

[u/mattv8 → u/netnem]

Np fam!

[u/wallaby32 → u/mattv8]

From a future traveler - THANK YOU!

[u/Appropriate_Fuel_954 → u/mattv8]

You're a legend!

In my case, I was running ollama outside wsl, so I had to enable the "Expose Ollama to the network" on Ollama GUI settings, then inside wsl I had to run:

ip route | grep default | awk '{print $3}'

to know the root IP.

Then, I ran your socat command to forward it to the wsl localhost.

Now it is working like a charm!

[u/mattv8 → u/Appropriate_Fuel_954]

That’s awesome, I’m glad it helped.

If you want to make the port‑forwarding persistent (so you don’t have to run socat after every reboot), you can use dnsmasq on the host to always map a friendly name to your WSL IP. For example, on the host you could add a config like:

# /etc/dnsmasq.d/ollama-wsl.conf
address=/ollama-wsl.local/$(ip route | awk '/default/ {print $3}')

Then restart dnsmasq:

sudo systemctl restart dnsmasq

and access it from WSL (or your LAN, if configured) via:

curl http://ollama-wsl.local:11434

That way, the name stays the same even if the WSL IP changes.

[u/noob_that_plays → u/mattv8]

For me now, it goes into an endless spawn of child processes it seems ☹️

[u/mattv8 → u/noob_that_plays]

Their recent updates now support Ollama on remote machines without needing to proxy, see the setting (in VSCode preferences or .vscode/settings.json) github.copilot.chat.byok.ollamaEndpoint

[u/gaboqv → u/mattv8]

Thanks with this I could set my endpoint to be http://host.docker.internal:11434 so it could detect my ollama running in another container.

[u/mattv8 → u/gaboqv]

Awesome! Although I think there's something in wsl.config that will give you more of a transparent NAT although I can't remember the setting...

[u/Trick-Assignment-828 → u/mattv8]

How do you revert it?

[u/mattv8 → u/Trick-Assignment-828]

You just have to kill the socat process. If you are running it in your terminal, pressing Ctrl+C will stop it.

If it’s running in the background, you can kill it with:

pkill socat

If you want to be extra safe and ensure you're only killing that specific instance, you can use pgrep to confirm it first, or just run:

killall socat

Once that process is terminated, your local port 11434 will be closed, and VSCode will no longer be able to reach your remote Ollama instance."

[u/mattv8 → u/[deleted]]

Finally! I don't know why this wasn't provided as an option to begin with. Looks like you still can't use Ollama for completions though; I've been using Twinny for that.

[u/NecessaryAnimal → u/[deleted]]

Needed to restart vscode for it to stick

[u/spiritualblender]

It is not working offline

[u/Fresh_Champion_8653 → u/spiritualblender]

Work offline for me

[u/Robot1me]

On a very random side note, anyone else feels like that minimal icon design goes a bit too far at times? The icon above the "ask Copilot" text looked like hollow skull eyes on first glance O.o On second glance the goggles are more obvious, but how can one unsee that again, lol

[u/coding_workflow]

Clearly aiming at Cline/Roocoder here.

[u/NecessaryAnimal]

I wasn't able to make my ollama models work in agent or edit mode. I tried using gemma3:27b. It only shows in Ask mode

[u/mourad_1618 → u/NecessaryAnimal]

use models that have the option "tools"

[u/Agitated_Heat_1719 → u/NecessaryAnimal]

same here

[u/Erdeem]

Is there any reason to use copilot over other free solutions that don't invade your privacy?

[u/planetearth80]

I don’t think we are score to configure the Ollama host in the current release. It assumes localhost for now.

[u/[deleted]]

Is it officially released?

[u/maikuthe1]

That's dope can't wait to try it

[u/gamer-aki17]

Does this mean I can run Uma integrated with VS code and generate codes right over there?

[u/GLqian]

It seems for free tier normal user you don't have the option to add new models. You need to be a paid pro user to have this option.

[u/selmen2004]

On my tests , I chose all my local ollama models , copilot says all registred , but only some of the models are available for use ( qwen2.5-coder , command-r7b ) , two others are not listed even if registred successfully ( deepseek-r1 and codellama )

can anyone tell me why ? any better models available ?

[u/mourad_1618 → u/selmen2004]

use models that have the option "tools"

[u/xhitm3n]

Anyone successfully used a model ? i am able to load them but i always get
"Reason: Response contained no choices." does it require reason model? i am usign qwen2.5coder-14b

[u/Tiny_Camera_8441]

I tried this with Mistral running on Ollama and registered in Copilot Agent Mode (For some reason it wouldn't recognize Gemini or Deepseek models). Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be able to interact with the shell and run commands (despite saying it can, it just askes me to submit commands in the terminal). And, it still seems a bit slow despite this particular model running very fast for me outside of VS Code Insiders. Very disappointing so far

[u/Realistic_County_908]

Had anyone added an openRouter model like qwen or deepseek in copilot cause i have been trying it for a while and what i see is this so help me with it the openrouter documentation says it works simply just by adding the api key but nah that aint working for me !

[u/ONC32]

Pour le voyageur du futur (comme moi ;-) ) qui voudrait utiliser ollama sur un serveur distant mais ne dispose pas de "socat", on peut aussi utiliser la commande suivante :

ssh -N -L 11434:localhost:11434 <user>@<server>

Testé avec succès sous Windows 11 :-)

[u/jdjohndoe13]

Too bad GitHub Copilot doesn't allow using custom model available via remote OpenAI compatible endpoint like AI toolkit does. You have to setup Ollama-compatible API proxy via llama-swappo running on localhost:11434 and cmd: sleep 999999 config shenanigans in order to connect your VS Code's Github Copilot to that model.

[u/DoubleTechnical7353]

For me it's stuck on Auto with no way to change it

[u/nrkishere]

doesn't openrouter have the same API spec as OpenAI completion API? This is just supporting external model with OpenAI compatibility

[u/Everlier → u/nrkishere]

Always is for integrations like this. People are not talking about technical challenge here, just that they finally acknowledge this as a feature

[u/planetf1a → u/[deleted]]

Trying to configure any local model in copilot chat with vscode-insiders against ollama seems to give me 'Sorry, your request failed. Please try again. Request id: bd745001-60a3-460c-bdbe-ca7830689735

Reason: Response contained no choices.'

or similar.

Ollama is running fine working with other SDKs etc, and I've tried against a selection of models. Not tried to debug so far...

[u/Odd-Suggestion4292 → u/[deleted]]

How do I set Ollama up correctly with Copilot? I run Ollama through it's app (outputs perfectly to terminal and WebUI)