Jan.ai

open_source

Jan.ai is a free, open-source AI assistant that runs LLMs locally on your device for complete privacy, or connects to cloud models like GPT-4, Claude, and Gemini.

AI Chatbots

AI Assistants

LLM Developer Tools

About

Jan.ai is a fully open-source desktop AI assistant designed to give users complete control over their AI interactions. Unlike cloud-dependent tools, Jan allows you to download and run popular open-source models — including Llama, Mistral, Qwen, DeepSeek, and Gemma — entirely on your local machine with no internet connection required. This makes it ideal for privacy-conscious individuals, developers, and enterprises that cannot send sensitive data to third-party servers. Jan also functions as a universal AI client, letting users seamlessly switch between local models and cloud-hosted APIs such as OpenAI's GPT, Anthropic's Claude, and Google's Gemini. The interface is clean, minimal, and designed to feel familiar to ChatGPT users while offering far greater flexibility. Beyond chat, Jan supports a growing ecosystem of connectors that integrate with productivity tools like Gmail, Google Drive, Notion, Slack, Figma, YouTube, and Jira — enabling context-aware, agentic workflows directly from the desktop app. A memory layer (coming soon) will allow Jan to retain user preferences and context across sessions. With over 5.3 million downloads, 40,900+ GitHub stars, and a community of 15,000+ members, Jan.ai is one of the most popular open-source local AI solutions available. It is free to use, requires no subscription, and is actively developed in public. Jan is ideal for developers, researchers, privacy advocates, and power users who want a customizable, offline-capable AI assistant.

Key Features

Local Model Execution: Download and run popular open-source LLMs like Llama, Mistral, Qwen, and DeepSeek entirely on your device — no internet or API key required.
Cloud Model Connectivity: Connect to cloud AI providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and others to use GPT-4, Claude, Gemini, and more through a single interface.
Productivity App Connectors: Integrate with Gmail, Google Drive, Notion, Slack, Figma, Jira, and other tools to provide AI assistance with full context from your workflow.
Privacy-First Architecture: All local model interactions stay on your device with no data sent to external servers, ensuring complete confidentiality for sensitive work.
Persistent Memory (Coming Soon): An upcoming memory layer will allow Jan to remember user preferences and context across sessions, eliminating repetitive setup.

Use Cases

Developers using local LLMs for code completion and debugging without exposing proprietary codebases to cloud services.
Privacy-conscious professionals running AI assistants offline to ensure sensitive business data never leaves their device.
Researchers experimenting with and comparing multiple open-source language models within a single unified interface.
Teams integrating Jan with Slack, Notion, and Google Drive to bring AI assistance into their existing collaboration workflows.
AI enthusiasts and hobbyists exploring open-source models like Llama and Mistral without cloud API costs or usage limits.

Pros

Completely Free and Open Source: Jan is free to use with no subscription fees. The source code is publicly available on GitHub with an active community of contributors.
Strong Privacy Guarantees: Running models locally means sensitive data never leaves your machine, making Jan ideal for confidential work or air-gapped environments.
Flexible Model Support: Supports a wide range of local open-source models as well as remote APIs, giving users the freedom to choose the best model for any task.
Rich Integration Ecosystem: Connectors for popular productivity tools allow Jan to work within existing workflows, adding AI capabilities without switching apps.

Cons

Hardware Requirements for Local Models: Running large language models locally requires a reasonably powerful machine with sufficient RAM and ideally a GPU, limiting accessibility on older hardware.
Memory Feature Not Yet Available: The persistent memory capability, which would allow context to carry across sessions, is still listed as coming soon and not yet released.

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, Jan.ai is free and open-source with no subscription fees. You only incur costs if you connect it to paid cloud APIs like OpenAI or Anthropic.

Yes. When using locally downloaded models, Jan operates fully offline with no internet connection required. Cloud model connections obviously require internet.

Jan.ai is available as a desktop application for macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Jan supports a wide range of open-source models including Llama (Meta), Mistral, Qwen (Alibaba), DeepSeek, Gemma (Google), and Kimi, as well as cloud APIs for GPT, Claude, and Gemini.

Unlike ChatGPT, Jan is open-source, free, and can run models locally without sending data to external servers. It also supports multiple model providers and has productivity app integrations, offering more flexibility and privacy.