8 alternativesLM Studio: Free
The best LM Studio alternatives
For most people the best alternative to LM Studio is ChatGPT, and the best free one is Claude.
ChatGPTPick it if you want 1 assistant you can type to, talk to or show photos on every device.Free to startCompare at a glance
LM Studio is highlighted, so you can see what you give up and what you gain.
| App | Price | How you pay | Mac | iPhone | iPad | App Store | Developer | Setapp | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 LM Studio | Free | Free | Too few ratings | ||||||
| ChatGPT | Free to start | Free, with paid upgrades | 4.8 | ||||||
 Claude | Free to start | Free, with paid upgrades | 4.7 | ||||||
 Draw Things | Free to start | Free, with paid upgrades | 4.4 | ||||||
 Gemini | Free to start | Free, with paid upgrades | 4.7 | ||||||
 Locally AI | Free | Free | 4.7 | ||||||
 Ollama | Free, open source | Free | Too few ratings | ||||||
 Littlebird | Free to start | Free, with paid upgrades | Too few ratings | ||||||
 Pinchbar | Free to start | Free, with paid upgrades | Too few ratings |
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The alternatives, in order
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Pick it if you want 1 assistant you can type to, talk to or show photos on every device.
The AI assistant to start with if you want to type, talk and show photos to 1 app on both iPhone and Mac.
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Pick this if you write or code for a living and want an AI that reasons through problems with you.
A thoughtful AI partner for writing, research and code, with a free plan that already searches the web and reads your files.
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Pick it if you want to generate and edit AI images on your own device, with control over models and settings.
A free offline AI image generator for iPhone, iPad and Mac with inpainting, ControlNet and LoRA training.
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Pick it if your email, files and calendar already sit in Gmail, Google Drive and Google Calendar.
The AI assistant to pick if your email, files and calendar already live with Google, with a free Mac app on top.
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Pick it if you want an AI chat you can use offline, with no account and nothing leaving your device.
A free AI chat app that runs open models on your iPhone, iPad or Mac with no account and no data collected.
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Pick it if you want private AI on your Mac or need a local model for apps and coding tools.
The open-source engine for running AI models on your own Mac, with optional cloud models when you need speed.
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Pick it if you want AI that already knows what you worked on today without you explaining it.
An AI assistant for your Mac that remembers what you worked on, so you can ask about it without explaining.
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Pick it if you paste text into ChatGPT several times a day just to clean up a sentence.
AI text actions on whatever you copy, from the menu bar, with on-device Apple Intelligence by default.
When LM Studio is still the right pick
You want to ask AI about private files without sending a single word to someone else's server.