Sean's Blog

Comparing Local AI Chat Apps

A short list of free AI chat apps for local LLM execution that work offline and promise privacy first (no user data collection).

Jan - https://github.com/menloresearch/jan

  • Standalone app: easy setup
  • Open source
  • Not many features

ChatBox - https://github.com/chatboxai/chatbox

  • Standalone app: easy setup
  • Open source
  • Features: (not yet tested)

Msty - https://msty.app/

  • Standalone app: easy setup
  • Closed Source
  • Small bootstrapped company
  • Features: RAG over files, split (copy) conversations, web search (unreliable right now)

LM Studio - https://lmstudio.ai/

  • Standalone app: easy setup
  • Closed Source
  • VC Funded (might clash with privacy focus in the future)
  • Features: Clean UI, split (copy) conversations

Open WebUI - https://docs.openwebui.com/

  • Web app: hard setup (Install is complicated, requires sign-up)
  • Open source

LibreChat - https://www.librechat.ai/

  • Web app: hard setup (requires Docker)
  • Open source

Conclusion

To me Jan and Msty stand out. Jan being a functional basic open-source chat app, that is easy to install and use. While Msty being also easy to setup but with more advanced features - Msty only lacks open-source. I recommend the Llama and Gemma model family for local basic use. DeepSeek R1 for advanced reasoning and coding capabilities.