streaming.mdx

---
title: Streaming
---

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:

```json
{"model":"gemma3","created_at":"2025-10-26T17:15:24.097767Z","response":"That","done":false}
{"model":"gemma3","created_at":"2025-10-26T17:15:24.109172Z","response":"'","done":false}
{"model":"gemma3","created_at":"2025-10-26T17:15:24.121485Z","response":"s","done":false}
{"model":"gemma3","created_at":"2025-10-26T17:15:24.132802Z","response":" a","done":false}
{"model":"gemma3","created_at":"2025-10-26T17:15:24.143931Z","response":" fantastic","done":false}
{"model":"gemma3","created_at":"2025-10-26T17:15:24.155176Z","response":" question","done":false}
{"model":"gemma3","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:

```json
{"model":"gemma3","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