Best for
Best for people and small teams who want an AI assistant over their own documents that runs locally by default.
- Freelancers
- Small and mid-sized
- Enterprise
AI Chatbots & Assistants Comparison
AnythingLLM vs. Jan
At a glance
At a glance
Best for
Best for developers and privacy-minded teams who want a desktop assistant whose default model runs locally, with cloud providers optional.
- Freelancers
- Small and mid-sized
- Enterprise
Cataleo does not name a winner. Both statements come from the vendors themselves.
Full Comparison
| Criterion | AnythingLLM | Jan |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free desktop app; Cloud from $50 / month The desktop app is free. AnythingLLM Cloud is $50 a month for Basic and $99 a month for Pro, each a private instance with a custom subdomain; Enterprise is quoted. Cloud plans expect you to bring your own LLM API key. | Free and open source The desktop app is free under the Apache 2.0 licence and local models cost nothing beyond the hardware they run on. Cloud models are billed by whichever provider you connect, against your own API key. |
| Free trial | Free desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux | Free and open source; local models run with no API key |
| Output | A private AI assistant answering over your own documents | A desktop AI assistant answering from local or cloud models |
| API | Yes | Yes, a built-in OpenAI-compatible server on port 1337, powered by llama.cpp |
| Hosting | Desktop app on macOS, Windows and Linux, self-hosted with Docker, or AnythingLLM Cloud | Runs on macOS, Windows and Linux; Tokamak is self-hosted for teams, and cloud models run on the provider you connect |
| Ecosystem | Desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux, Docker for multi-user self-hosting, AnythingLLM Cloud and mobile apps, with a plugin framework for custom agent skills | Desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux, with Jan Agent as a separate command-line agent and Tokamak as a self-hosted router carrying policy controls and audit trails for organisations. MCP servers attach under Settings, and documented integrations cover Claude Code and OpenClaw |
| Live web search and sources | Yes, agents can browse and scrape the web | Yes, built in and on by default: web_search and web_fetch are advertised to any model that supports tool use, with a keyless Exa endpoint as the default provider, so no API key and no MCP server are needed. Only tool-capable models see the tools |
| Files and long documents | Yes, documents are embedded into workspaces for retrieval, with configurable chunking and a choice of local or cloud embedding models and vector databases including LanceDB, Chroma, Milvus, Pinecone, Weaviate, Qdrant and AstraDB | Yes, files attach to a single message, or go into a Project where they are chunked and indexed for retrieval across every conversation in it. PDF, Markdown, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX and code files are supported, and processing happens on the machine |
| Images, voice and video | A meeting assistant transcribes and summarises meetings locally with action items and transcripts, plus dictation and context-aware autocomplete | Images and audio attach to a chat when the active model can take them: the image option appears only with a vision-capable model such as Jan-v2-VL, and audio accepts WAV and MP3 |
| Coding help | No code execution skill and no coding mode of its own, so code answers depend on the model you connect. The default agent skills cover RAG search, web browsing and scraping, SQL queries against a database, file system access, chart and document generation and scheduled jobs, and custom skills are written in JavaScript | Jan-Code-4B is available in the Hub for local coding, and Jan Agent runs coding tasks in a terminal with subagents, skills and memory, asking for confirmation before each write and shell command. It is a preview shipped on a nightly channel |
| Model choice | Yes, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Gemini and Vertex AI, Azure OpenAI, AWS Bedrock, Groq and Mistral in the cloud, or Ollama, LM Studio, LocalAI, KoboldCPP and oMLX locally | Yes, and both kinds mix in the same app: local models through llama.cpp and MLX from the Hub, or cloud models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Gemini, Groq, Mistral AI, OpenRouter and Hugging Face, plus any OpenAI- or Anthropic-compatible endpoint |
| Deployment | more entries Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based, On-premise | On-premise |
| Support | Community forum | Community forum |
| Onboarding | Documentation and knowledge base | Documentation and knowledge base |
| Company size | Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise | Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise |
| Integrations | more entries Ollama, LM Studio, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, Azure OpenAI, AWS Bedrock, Groq, Mistral AI, LanceDB, Chroma, Milvus, Pinecone, Weaviate, Qdrant, AstraDB, Gmail, Google Calendar, Outlook | OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, Azure OpenAI, Groq, Mistral AI, OpenRouter, Hugging Face, llama.cpp, MLX, Model Context Protocol, Claude Code, OpenClaw, Exa |
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The short version
Key Differences
- Starting price AnythingLLM Free desktop app; Cloud from $50 / month Jan Free and open source
- Free trial AnythingLLM Free desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux Jan Free and open source; local models run with no API key
- Deployment AnythingLLM Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based, On-premise Jan On-premise
- Hosting AnythingLLM Desktop app on macOS, Windows and Linux, self-hosted with Docker, or AnythingLLM Cloud Jan Runs on macOS, Windows and Linux; Tokamak is self-hosted for teams, and cloud models run on the provider you connect
- Output AnythingLLM A private AI assistant answering over your own documents Jan A desktop AI assistant answering from local or cloud models
Every line is one datapoint from the table above, picked automatically. Nothing here is written text.
The trade-offs
Strengths and Limitations
AnythingLLM
Strengths
- The desktop app runs entirely on your own device, with no account or API key needed
- Wide choice of cloud and local model providers, embedding models and vector databases
- Agents cover web browsing and scraping, file operations, charts and SQL, and connect to Gmail, Google Calendar and Outlook
- MCP servers attach on both the desktop and Docker builds
- Open source under the MIT licence
Limitations
- Cloud plans buy a private instance and still expect you to bring your own LLM API key
- Enterprise pricing is quoted rather than published
- The range of model, embedding and vector-store options needs someone willing to choose among them
Jan
Strengths
- Local models are the default: no account, no API key and nothing leaves the machine
- Web search and page fetching work out of the box, keyless, with no provider to configure
- Its own OpenAI-compatible local server, so other applications can call the models it runs
- Wide model choice, from llama.cpp and MLX locally to eight cloud providers and any compatible endpoint
- Open source under the Apache 2.0 licence
Limitations
- Desktop only: installers cover macOS, Windows and Linux, and there is no hosted version
- Jan Agent is a preview distributed on a nightly channel rather than a stable release
- Frontier models still need a third-party key and are billed by that provider
- Answer quality from local models depends on the hardware you have
- Memory is announced as coming soon and Cowork is marked preview
Plans
Pricing
AnythingLLM
- Desktop $0 Free desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux, running locally on your own device.
- Basic $50 / month AnythingLLM Cloud. A private instance with a custom subdomain, with retrieval and agents ready to use; bring your own LLM API key.
- Pro $99 / month AnythingLLM Cloud for larger teams, with a 72-hour support SLA.
- Enterprise Not stated Quoted. On-premise deployment, customisable SLA, custom integrations, SSO and RBAC.
Jan
- Free $0 The whole desktop app under the Apache 2.0 licence. Local models run on your own hardware; cloud models are billed by the provider whose key you add.
What users say
Review Scores · opens after launch
AnythingLLM
- Ease of use
- Not rated yet
- User interface
- Not rated yet
- Onboarding
- Not rated yet
- Support and service
- Not rated yet
- Value for money
- Not rated yet
- Features
- Not rated yet
No reviews yet. Be the first to review this tool. Every review is checked for fairness before it appears, and the vendor cannot have one removed.
Jan
- Ease of use
- Not rated yet
- User interface
- Not rated yet
- Onboarding
- Not rated yet
- Support and service
- Not rated yet
- Value for money
- Not rated yet
- Features
- Not rated yet
No reviews yet. Be the first to review this tool. Every review is checked for fairness before it appears, and the vendor cannot have one removed.
Where this comes from
Where this comes from
AnythingLLM https://anythingllm.com · checked against the official source on 2026-09-13
Jan https://jan.ai · checked against the official source on 2026-09-15
This table lists factual criteria taken from information the vendors publish themselves. For how we put it together, see the methodology.