Tools
Jan vs LocalAI
Jan or LocalAI? Their plans monthly and yearly, the capabilities their makers state, security and latest updates, side by side — read from the makers' own pages.
In short
- Both: Runs commands, Command line, Choice of models, Self-hosted, API
- Only Jan states: Chat about your code, Agent that edits files
- Only LocalAI states: VS Code, Runs models for you, Builds agents and workflows, Search over your data
Jan
Jan is a free, open-source AI app for running models locally, connecting cloud providers, and using agents, tools, and web search.
Plans
Not read from the maker’s page yet.
Prices checked 2026-09-25 on the maker’s page.
Capabilities
- Chat about your code — “Install Jan on macOS, Windows, or Linux and chat with AI in minutes — no account needed.” source
- Agent that edits files — “Give Jan a task and it works on it autonomously — files, commands, and web research.” source
- Runs commands — “Give Jan a task and it works on it autonomously — files, commands, and web research.” source
- Command line — “Serve local models and launch autonomous agents from your terminal using Jan's local AI.” source
- Choice of models — “Choose from open models or plug in your favorite online models.” source
- Self-hosted — “Run a local OpenAI-compatible API server on your machine.” source
- API — “Run a local OpenAI-compatible API server on your machine.” source
Latest updates
- Jan v0.8.4: Native Web Search, Per-Model Chat Templates & a Backend Settings Store (v0.8.4)
Adds native web_search / web_fetch tools, per-model chat-template kwargs for llama.cpp, a token counter, and a backend-managed store for settings and credentials.
- Jan v0.8.3: Message Branching, Linux Custom Titlebar & HTML/SVG Artifacts (v0.8.3)
Brings message version branching, a Linux titlebar, a reasoning/tool timeline, HTML and SVG artifact previews, video input for local vision models, and fixes.
- Jan v0.8.2: Faster Startup, AMD ROCm/HIP on Linux & Resumable Downloads (v0.8.2)
Adds AMD ROCm/HIP support on Linux, a phased-startup loader, pause/resume model downloads, a context size default, and fixes.
LocalAI
LocalAI runs AI models on your own hardware through an OpenAI-compatible local server and web interface.
Plans
Not read from the maker’s page yet.
Prices checked 2026-09-25 on the maker’s page.
Capabilities
- Runs commands — “It runs shell commands behind an approval gate you control, delegates to sub-agents, and loads MCP servers, plugins and skills.” source
- VS Code — “Install on openSUSE and drive it from VS Code” source
- Command line — “Run local-ai chat and you are talking to an agent that already knows where your models are.” source
- Choice of models — “Every tier of every model we quantize, ranked against the hardware you actually have and installed with one click.” source
- Self-hosted — “keep your data on your hardware, and scale to a room full of GPUs when you need more capacity.” source
- API — “One binary with an OpenAI-compatible API in front of it.” source
- Runs models for you — “Point an existing client at it and the calls keep working, except now the model is on your machine.” source
- Builds agents and workflows — “Run local-ai chat and you are talking to an agent that already knows where your models are.” source
- Search over your data — “Agents, MCP, skills, RAG, interactive tools” source
Latest updates
- v4.10.0 (v4.10.0)
Added a fleet operations dashboard, credentials.yaml authentication, and CLI end-to-end latency and throughput benchmarking.
- v4.9.0 (v4.9.0)
Authentication now defaults to deny; chat supports context compression, canonical model/backend pages, and video serving in vllm-cpp.
- v4.8.0 (v4.8.0)
Added the vllm-cpp backend, 3D generation, a multi-family audio.cpp engine, hardware-matched gallery builds, and distributed-mode fixes.