Locally AI vs PocketPal AI
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
Locally AI
Free app that runs open AI models offline on iPhone, iPad and Mac
Free
PocketPal AI
Open-source app for running AI models offline on phones and tablets
Free plan · from $0.99 one-time
Where they differ
- Locally AI is free. PocketPal AI starts at $0.99 per premium Pal, one-time (US App Store in-app purchase).
- Only Locally AI lists a macOS app.
- Only PocketPal AI lists an Android app.
- PocketPal AI is open source, according to its own site.
In commonFree planiOSWorks offlineLocal-firstAI featuresChat assistant
At a glance
| Locally AI | PocketPal AI | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free | Free plan |
| Starts at | Free | $0.99 per premium Pal, one-time (US App Store in-app purchase) |
| Free plan | The app is free on the App Store and Mac App Store, with no login. The US listing shows no in-app purchases. | The app is free, ad-free and open source, with no subscription or paid tier for the AI itself. Only premium Pals from the PalsHub marketplace cost money. |
| Free trial | None listed | None listed |
| macOS | ||
| iOS | ||
| Android | ||
| Made by | Element Labs, Inc. | Gooya UG (haftungsbeschränkt) |
| Price read from | apps.apple.com | apps.apple.com |
| Checked | Oct 9, 2026 | Oct 9, 2026 |
Who each one suits
Locally AI
- Trying open models on an iPhone, iPad or Mac at no cost
- LM Studio users who want their desktop models on a phone
- Private chats that work with no connection and no account
PocketPal AI
- Running open models privately on an iPhone, iPad or Android phone
- Trying many GGUF models from Hugging Face on a mobile device
- Checking how fast a particular phone runs local models
Worth knowing
Locally AI
- It is available only for recent iPhone, iPad and Mac models, and is optimized for Apple Silicon chips.
- Which models run depends on the device's memory; the site points to iPad and Mac for the largest ones.
- Using larger models through LM Link requires LM Studio running on a computer of your own.
- LM Studio acquired the app in April 2026, and the App Store now lists it as Locally AI by LM Studio.
PocketPal AI
- It is built for phones and tablets only; the App Store listing marks it as not verified for macOS.
- Which models run, and how fast, depends on the device's memory and chip, so each model's quantization has to be chosen to fit.
- The built-in tools are limited to a calculator, date and time, and HTML rendering.
- Premium Pals are paid extras, and prices differ between the App Store, Google Play and the PalsHub website, which charges in euros.
Key features
Locally AI
- On-device models through MLX
- Downloads and runs open models from the Llama, Gemma, Qwen, DeepSeek, SmolLM, Granite, Cogito and LFM families on Apple Silicon, using Apple's MLX framework.
- Offline, with no account
- Once a model is downloaded, chats run with no internet connection and no login. The vendor says processing stays on the device and no data is collected.
- LM Link to LM Studio
- Links the app to LM Studio on your own computer over an end-to-end encrypted connection, so an iPhone or iPad can use larger models than it could run itself.
- Local voice mode
- Holds real-time spoken conversations with a model, with the speech handled on the device instead of by a cloud service.
- Language and vision models
- Some models take images as well as text, so a chat can analyze a picture. The app also supports Apple's on-device Foundation Models on current OS releases.
- Siri, Shortcuts and Control Center
- Talk to a local model through Siri, call models from the Shortcuts app to build automations, and open the app from Control Center, the Lock Screen or the Action Button.
PocketPal AI
- On-device chat with GGUF models
- Runs open models such as Gemma, Qwen, Phi and Llama through llama.cpp on the phone's CPU, GPU or, on Qualcomm chips, NPU. Nothing is sent to a server.
- Hugging Face downloads
- Search, bookmark and download GGUF models from the Hugging Face Hub inside the app, picking a quantization that fits the device. Gated models work with your own access token.
- Pals and PalsHub
- A Pal is an assistant with its own default model, system prompt and personality, in Assistant or Roleplay form. PalsHub lists Pals made by other people, both free and paid.
- On-device text-to-speech
- Replies can be read aloud by neural voice engines such as Kokoro that run on the phone, so speech needs no cloud service either.
- Built-in tools
- Capable Pals can call tools in the middle of a conversation: a calculator, the current date and time, and rendering of HTML that the model writes.
- Benchmarking and leaderboard
- Measures tokens per second and memory use for a model on your device. Results can optionally be submitted to the public AI Phone Leaderboard.
Plans
Locally AI
Free$0
The full app for iPhone, iPad and Mac: local models, voice mode, Siri and Shortcuts actions, and LM Link to LM Studio.
PocketPal AI
Free$0
The full app: offline chat with GGUF models, Hugging Face downloads, text-to-speech, your own Pals, built-in tools and benchmarking.
Premium Pals$0.99 to $2.99
per Pal, one-time in-app purchase (US App Store)
Optional community-made assistants from PalsHub. Google Play's US listing shows $1.39 to $2.79 per item, and the PalsHub website prices paid Pals from €1.49.
