Jan
Hacker ApprovedRanked 12 of 27 local LLM runners by recommenders
Open-source desktop app for chatting with local AI models, with a simple interface and built-in model downloads. Critics say workspace features are thin and it needs internet and has telemetry.
Open-source desktop app for chatting with local AI models, with a simple interface and built-in model downloads. Critics say workspace features are thin and it needs internet and has telemetry.
24 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 18
- criticize it
- 6
- approval share
- 75%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 18 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 9 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Open source and free
“its open source, has a simple chat interface, it uses llama.cpp, it lets you search for models and downloads them”
Comment from 16 Apr 2026 in “Stop Using Ollama” “Open source and clean, but workspace features are thin and updates are enforced.”
Comment from 26 Dec 2025 in “Local AI apps worldwide 26 Dec 2025” “jan.ai is the F/LOSS alternative to it”
Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “Nativ: Run frontier open models locally on your Mac” Simple desktop chat interface
“its open source, has a simple chat interface, it uses llama.cpp, it lets you search for models and downloads them”
Comment from 16 Apr 2026 in “Stop Using Ollama” “There's Jan, which is probably what you want. It's a desktop app rather than a web UI.”
Comment from 30 Apr 2026 in “Granite 4.1: IBM's 8B Model Matching 32B MoE” Works well for local chat
“is similar and works great for me”
Comment from 1 Jun 2026 in “Odysseus – self-hosted AI workspace” “For local chat Jan seems okay”
Comment from 5 Nov 2025 on Hacker News “Give Jan a try for instance.”
Comment from 29 Nov 2025 in “So you wanna build a local RAG?”
Other local LLM runners people recommend
The four most recommended other local LLM runners, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| llama.cpp | 471 | 109 | 81% | 13 | 1 yr4 owners | Approved |
| Ollama | 350 | 247 | 59% | 12 | 1.5 yrs8 owners | — |
| LM Studio | 217 | 74 | 75% | 12 | 3 yrs4 owners | Approved |
| DS4 by antirez | 109 | 20 | 84% | 7 | 1 mo3 owners | Approved |
| JanThis page | 18 | 6 | 75% | 9 | — | Approved |
What people said
16 of the 25 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“couldn't get that working well in any of them”
“The speed obtained by this optimized program is many times higher than the current speed reached by llama.cpp”
“it does it automatically.”
“This could be a game changer for me.”
“But it needs internet connection to work first time and has telemetry on it. It is still a nice app though.”
“jan.ai is the F/LOSS alternative to it”
“is similar and works great for me”
“There's Jan, which is probably what you want. It's a desktop app rather than a web UI.”
“its open source, has a simple chat interface, it uses llama.cpp, it lets you search for models and downloads them”
“All of those options were either too slow, or didnt work for me”
“It natively supports LM Studio, Ollama, vLLM, Jan, and llama.cpp as providers”
“cannot execute any commands without it”
“Open source and clean, but workspace features are thin and updates are enforced.”
“Give Jan a try for instance.”
“Jan.ai only has this on their roadmap for v0.8”
“For local chat Jan seems okay”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.