Jan

Jan is the most straightforward path from "I want ChatGPT but private and free" to a working solution. It is an open-source desktop application that provides a clean, familiar chat interface — visually similar to ChatGPT — while running AI models entirely on your local hardware. No data leaves your computer, there are no subscription fees, and once you have downloaded a model, you can use it without any internet connection. With over 5 million downloads and 41,000+ GitHub stars, Jan has become one of the most popular local AI tools.

What makes Jan unique among local AI tools is its hybrid approach. While it runs open-source models locally by default, you can optionally connect cloud APIs from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, and others through API key configuration. This means Jan serves as a unified interface: use local models for private conversations and cloud models when you need maximum capability. Switching between local and cloud is seamless, and having everything in one application reduces the friction of managing multiple AI subscriptions and interfaces.

The MIT open-source license is significant — it is the most permissive license of any local AI tool, meaning businesses can freely modify, deploy, and build on Jan without licensing concerns. The OpenAI-compatible API server lets developers use Jan as a local backend for any application that supports the OpenAI format. The main limitations are the same as any local AI tool: performance depends on your hardware, and even the best local models do not yet match the quality of frontier cloud models like GPT-4o or Claude for complex tasks. But for everyday conversations, writing assistance, and code help, Jan delivers a compelling free alternative.