How to Get Free JetBrains IDEs as a Student and Run Claude Code with Ollama Locally

As a student, you need good tools without paying for subscriptions. In this tutorial, I'll show step by step how to:

Everything here is done on Windows 11 / PowerShell. The steps are almost identical on macOS and Linux.

According to JetBrains' terms, the student license is for non-commercial use (studies, personal projects, learning) and is renewable as long as you remain a student. Always check the current terms on the official site.

Once activated, the license appears in your JetBrains account and gives you access to all the IDEs.

WebStorm: https://www.jetbrains.com/webstorm/download/

IntelliJ IDEA: https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/download/

Choose your system (Windows, macOS or Linux) and click Download. On Windows you get an.exe file.

Follow the wizard (Next, Next, Install). Installation takes a few minutes.

On first launch, sign in with your JetBrains account (the one with the student license) and the IDE activates automatically. That's it: professional IDEs, for free.

Ollama lets you download and run language models on your own machine. Your code never leaves your computer and there is no per-request cost.

On https://ollama.com you can create a free account. The dashboard shows your free quota for cloud models. For the rest of this tutorial (100% local), it isn't required.

Go to the download page: https://ollama.com/download

irm https://ollama.com/install.ps1 | iex Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

You can also click "Download manually" and use the graphical installer.

ollama Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode A welcome screen appears. Press Enter to continue.

ollama --version Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Tip: you can run this directly in the built-in terminal of IntelliJ or WebStorm.

I chose Qwen 3.5 4B, a small open-source model (~3 GB) that runs on a regular laptop:

ollama pull qwen3.5:4b Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

When you see success, the model is ready. You can test it:

ollama run qwen3.5:4b Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode Part 3: Connect Claude Code to Ollama Claude Code is a coding assistant that runs in your terminal. Ollama can talk to it thanks to an Anthropic-compatible API: Claude Code thinks it's talking to its usual server, but your local model is answering.

In your project folder (for example in the IntelliJ terminal):

ollama launch claude --model qwen3.5:4b Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode Ollama installs Claude Code if it isn't there yet, sets the required variables for you and starts it with the chosen model.

And there it is: Claude Code running with qwen3.5:4b locally.

If Claude Code is already installed, you can point it to Ollama yourself with three environment variables.

$ env: ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN = "ollama" $ env: ANTHROPIC_API_KEY = "" $ env: ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL = "http://localhost:11434" claude --model qwen3.5:4b Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode macOS / Linux:

export ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN = ollama export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY = "" export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL = http://localhost:11434 claude --model qwen3.5:4b Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode localhost:11434 is the address of Ollama's local server.

If you have questions or try another model, let me know in the comments!