Compare
AI Stays Local and LM Studio
A desktop application for discovering and running local models, with a command line and a local server.
When LM Studio is the better fit
- You want a desktop application you can use today.
- You want to chat with a document on your own machine without a command line.
- You want to route work between several of your own devices now.
Side by side
LM Studio as its own public pages describe it on 2026-09-21, and AI Stays Local at the maturity its product data records. Where a source does not say, the table says so rather than guessing.
| Dimension | LM Studio | AI Stays Local |
|---|---|---|
| Interface | Desktop application, the lms command line, and a local server with OpenAI-compatible endpoints. | Command line and an OpenAI-compatible local API, in private beta for selected testers. A desktop app is planned and not built. |
| Runs models itself | Yes. | Yes. Inference sits behind an engine adapter; the recorded profiles run on upstream engines under their own licences. |
| Documents and retrieval | Yes. Documents can be attached to a chat, and the documentation describes retrieval. | Folders you grant, lexical retrieval, answers that cite file and location, and refusal when the documents do not contain the answer. |
| Hardware planning | Not stated in the source checked | Evaluates the machine and recommends a model profile (private beta). Each model states execution, validation, usability, hardware and availability separately. |
| More than one machine | The documentation describes LM Link, which routes local AI workloads across your devices. | Planned. Multi-node execution is designed and not implemented. |
| Platforms | macOS on Apple Silicon, Windows on x64 and ARM64, and Linux on x64. | Command line on Linux and macOS for selected testers. Measurements published from one Linux ARM64 machine. |
| Licence | Not stated in the source checked | Commercial product. A Free edition is defined for local use; paid prices are provisional. The runtime is not open source. |
Where AI Stays Local puts its emphasis
- AI Stays Local recommends a profile from an evaluation of the hardware, and publishes the evidence per model with the machine it was taken on.
- Its desktop app is planned, not built. Today it is a command line and a local API for selected testers.
- Its multi-machine design is planned, not implemented.
Sources, checked 2026-09-21: LM Studio documentation. Descriptions of other projects are summaries of their own public pages on that date and may since have changed. No statement here is a claim about another project's security.