Is Garnet just a wrapper around Ollama?

No. Garnet is a finished product for someone who wants a private assistant that already works — it sets itself up, picks a model that fits your computer, and gives you a plain chat window, with no terminal and nothing to configure. Ollama is an excellent open-source engine for developers who want to run and script models themselves. They aim at different people: Ollama at the person who enjoys the setup, Garnet at the person who just wants the result.

What is the easiest private AI to set up for a non-developer?

Among the do-it-yourself tools, Jan and LM Studio are the most approachable — they give you a desktop app instead of a command line. But you still choose and download models yourself and tune settings. Garnet is built so there is nothing to choose: it installs, configures itself for your machine, and is ready to talk to. For anyone who doesn't want to become a hobbyist, that's the difference.

Do Ollama, LM Studio, Jan and LocalAI keep my data private?

Yes — like Garnet, they all run the model on your own computer, so your words stay on your machine. Privacy is the whole category, not a Garnet exclusive. What separates the tools is who they're built for and how much setup they ask of you, not whether your data leaves.

When should I pick Ollama or LocalAI over Garnet?

If you're a developer who wants to script local models, swap them freely, or run a local OpenAI-compatible API server, Ollama and LocalAI are built for exactly that and they're free and excellent. Garnet isn't trying to win that person. Garnet is for the person who wants a private assistant that already works, and a human to call if they'd rather not do it themselves.

Garnet vs Ollama, LM Studio, Jan & LocalAI

An honest comparison of the private-AI tools · about a 5-minute read

The short version: these are all good tools, and they all keep your words on your own computer — that's the whole point of running an AI locally. The difference isn't privacy. It's who each one is built for. Ollama, LM Studio, Jan and LocalAI are built for people who enjoy setting things up. Garnet is built for the person who just wants a private assistant that already works — and a human to call if they'd rather not do it themselves.

What these tools have in common

Every tool on this page does the same core thing: it runs the AI model on your own computer instead of sending your words to a company's servers. That means the same headline benefits across all of them — your conversations stay on your machine, it keeps working with the internet unplugged, and there's no subscription to a cloud service for the model itself. If you've landed here worried about privacy, the good news is that any of these is a real answer to that worry.

So we're not going to pretend Garnet is "the private one." They're all private. The honest question is a different one: how much of your time and patience does each one ask for before it's useful?

The tools, briefly and fairly

Each of these is genuinely good at what it sets out to do. Here's the straight version:

Ollama — a free, open-source engine for running models locally, driven mostly from the command line. Beloved by developers because it's clean, scriptable, and easy to wire into your own projects. If "open a terminal and pull a model" sounds fine to you, it's superb.
LM Studio — a free desktop app that lets you discover, download and run local models through a polished graphical interface, with knobs for the people who like knobs. More approachable than a command line, and aimed at enthusiasts who want to choose and tune their own models.
Jan — a free, open-source, ChatGPT-style desktop app focused on privacy. Probably the friendliest of the do-it-yourself options: a clean chat window where you still pick and manage the models yourself.
LocalAI — a free, open-source, self-hosted drop-in replacement for the OpenAI API. This one is squarely for developers: you run it as a local server so your own software can call a private model instead of a cloud one.

All four are free and open-source, and we genuinely admire them. If you're technical and curious, go play with them — you'll learn a lot, and you may never need anything else.

Where Garnet is different

Garnet isn't an engine or a model browser. It's a finished product for a person who doesn't want a project. The whole design goal is that there's nothing to decide and nothing to configure:

It sets itself up. No terminal, no choosing between a dozen model files, no parameters to tune. You install it and it's ready to talk to.
It fits itself to your computer. Garnet looks at what your machine can carry and runs a model sized for it, so you get the sharpest version your hardware allows without having to understand any of that.
There's a human behind it. If you'd rather not touch any of it, we'll set it up on your computer for you — and for the few who need far more than a laptop can hold, the same engineer builds dedicated private-AI systems on their own hardware. None of the DIY tools offer a person to call.

Put bluntly: the others hand you excellent parts. Garnet hands you the finished thing — and stands behind it.

Side by side

Comparing Garnet to a typical do-it-yourself local-AI tool. We've grouped the four because, for this question, they're more alike than different — all free, all local, all built for someone who's happy to drive.
	DIY tools (Ollama · LM Studio · Jan · LocalAI)	Garnet
Who it's for
Built for	Developers and enthusiasts who enjoy the setup	✓ Anyone who just wants a private assistant that works
Comfort with a terminal or settings	Helpful to expected, depending on the tool	✓ None needed — nothing to configure
Getting started
Choosing & downloading a model	You pick from many and manage them yourself	✓ Done for you — it fits one to your machine
Setup	You do it (from a few clicks to a config file)	✓ It sets itself up — or we do it on your computer for you
The basics they all share
Runs entirely on your computer	✓ Yes	✓ Yes
Works with no internet	✓ Yes	✓ Yes
Free to use	✓ Yes, and open-source	✓ Yes — the app is free
When you want more
A person to set it up for you	No — it's yours to run	✓ Yes — optional guided setup
Scales to a dedicated, always-on build	You'd architect it yourself	✓ One engineer builds it on your own hardware

When one of the others is the better pick

We'd rather lose you to the right tool than win you to the wrong one. Pick a do-it-yourself tool over Garnet when:

You're a developer who wants to script models, swap them freely, or run a local OpenAI-compatible API for your own software — Ollama or LocalAI are built for exactly that.
You love tuning things and want to browse, benchmark and parameter-tweak a shelf of models yourself — LM Studio is a joy for that.
You want a free, open-source chat app and don't mind managing models — Jan is a lovely place to start, today.

Garnet is for the other person — the one who read all of that and thought "I just want it to work." If that's you, you're in the right place.

If Garnet sounds like you

The Garnet app is free and coming soon. If you want the free app: join the early-access list and we'll email you the day it's ready to download — one email, the day it lands, nothing else. No account, your words stay on your own computer.

If you'd rather not set anything up yourself, or you need more than a laptop can hold, book a free scoping call — no card; you only pay if you decide to have something built.

More: the plain-English starter guide · using it for sensitive documents · what we can and can't see · back to top.