Tools
llama.cpp vs LM Studio
llama.cpp or LM Studio? 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: Command line, Choice of models, Self-hosted, API
- Only LM Studio states: No code retained, Official SDKs, Runs models for you, Search over your data
llama.cpp
Open-source C/C++ software for running large language and vision-language models locally or in the cloud.
Plans
Free
Free
- Unlimited public/private repositories
- Dependabot security and version updates
- 2,000 CI/CD minutes/month
- 500MB of Packages storage
- Issues & Projects
- Community support
Team
- $4 per user/month
- Access to GitHub Codespaces
- Repository rules
- Multiple reviewers in pull requests
- Draft pull requests
- Code owners
- Required reviewers
Enterprise
- Starting at $21 per user/month
- Data residency
- Enterprise Managed Users
- User provisioning through SCIM
- Enterprise Account to centrally manage multiple organizations
- Environment protection rules
- Repository rules
Prices checked 2026-09-24 on the maker’s page.
Capabilities
- Command line — “llama cli -hf ggml-org/Qwen3.5-0.8B-GGUF” source
- Choice of models — “llama cli -hf ggml-org/Qwen3.5-0.8B-GGUF” source
- Self-hosted — “locally and in the cloud.” source
- API — “Launch OpenAI-compatible API server” source
Latest updates
- b11160
Adds Vulkan int8 cooperative-matrix quantized matmul for AMD RDNA3 and RDNA4, including q8_0, q4_1, q5_0, and q5_1.
- b11159
Handles misalignment in conv_2d and conv_3d.
- b11158
LM Studio
Runs open language models locally on Windows, macOS, and Linux, with chat, a programmable API, and optional cloud inference.
Plans
Free
Free
- Run local LLMs on your machine
- Bionic Agent
- Run local LLMs using llama.cpp and MLX
- State-of-the-art offline voice transcription
- LM Link for up to 5 devices
- Limited web search
Bionic+
- $ 20 USD / month
- US-hosted open source models: Kimi K3, GLM 5.3, DeepSeek V4 Flash, and more
- Discounted bulk tokens
- Web search and page extraction
Pro
- $ 100 USD / month
- 5× usage limits
- Discounted bulk tokens
- Early access to new features
Prices checked 2026-09-25 on the maker’s page.
Capabilities
- Command line — “LM Studio CLI (lms)” source
- Choice of models — “Download the latest local LLMs directly within the app and use them for simple chats or advanced agentic tasks.” source
- Self-hosted — “llmster is LM Studio's headless daemon for servers, cloud instances, and CI.” source
- No code retained — “Zero data retention means your prompts and responses are not stored by the provider.” source
- API — “Experiment with LLMs on your computer. Chat interface and programmable API.” source
- Official SDKs — “lmstudio-js lmstudio-python” source
- Runs models for you — “Bionic cloud inference is US-hosted, with Zero data retention (ZDR)” source
- Search over your data — “Fixed a bug where RAG document retrieval could fail with some llama.cpp models” source
Latest updates
- Bionic 1.1.6 (1.1.6)
Canvas: board that both you and Bionic can edit; Markdown and source files in the in-app editor.
- Bionic 1.1.5 (1.1.5)
Qwen3.8 inference using a new engine: Splash (by Inco AI); prompt-processing status for models without percentage progress.
- Bionic 1.1.4 (1.1.4)
Introspection: agent can read messages earlier in its own history; supports @ referencing other sessions; tool-call argument streaming.