The 8 best local AI apps for private office work in 2026

The list at a glance

How we chose: each app runs models on your own hardware, is free to use at work, runs on at least macOS or Windows (or on a server you control), and was actively maintained when we checked.

The apps, one by one

01OpenClerq

Best for

Recurring clerical work where figures must be exact

Licence

MIT

Runs on

macOS, Windows

Our product. A desktop agent for office work rather than a chat app: calculations run in a deterministic engine that returns a proof record, and the model — local through Ollama or LM Studio, or one of six cloud providers under your key — explains the result. Schedules, watched files and webhooks run instructions on their own, and every run is recorded with its model, tokens and cost. A comparison mode sends one message to up to eight models side by side.

Drawbacks: early software (release 0.5). It needs a separate model runner for local models, reads only plain-text files, and has no document chat. Agents that act on files arrive in 0.6.

02Ollama

Best for

Serving local models to other apps

Licence

MIT

Runs on

macOS, Windows, Linux

The standard way to run open-weight models locally. One command downloads and runs a model, and a background service answers on localhost:11434, including an OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Most apps on this list can use it as their engine, and its desktop app for macOS and Windows adds a chat window that accepts dropped text files and PDFs.

Drawbacks: a basic interface, with no workspaces or search across a whole library of documents. It can also run some models in Ollama's cloud — choose local models if the data must stay on the machine.

03LM Studio

Best for

Browsing, downloading and comparing models

Licence

Proprietary; free for home and work since July 2025

Runs on

macOS, Windows, Linux

A polished desktop app for finding models, checking whether they fit your memory, and chatting with them — including with documents you attach. It can run a local server with OpenAI-compatible endpoints, so other tools can use the models it has loaded. On Apple Silicon it supports the MLX format as well as GGUF.

Drawbacks: closed source, and no record of what was asked beyond its chat history.

04Jan

Best for

An open-source replacement for a ChatGPT-style app

Licence

Apache 2.0 (relicensed from AGPLv3 in 2025)

Runs on

macOS, Windows, Linux

A clean chat app that downloads and runs local models without a terminal, and can also connect to cloud APIs when you choose. It includes a local API server, so it can double as a model runner for other tools.

Drawbacks: built for conversation; for work across many documents, AnythingLLM goes further.

05AnythingLLM

Best for

Asking questions across your own documents

Licence

MIT

Runs on

macOS, Windows, Linux; Docker for multi-user

From Mintplex Labs. You create workspaces, add documents, and chat with them using a built-in local model, Ollama, LM Studio or a cloud provider. It also has agents that can use tools. The desktop version is single-user; the Docker version adds users and permissions.

Drawbacks: many settings to understand, and the multi-user server takes real setup.

06GPT4All

Best for

Private document chat on an ordinary laptop

Licence

MIT

Runs on

macOS, Windows, Ubuntu

From Nomic AI. Runs models on ordinary processors without a graphics card. Its LocalDocs feature indexes a folder of files on the device and feeds relevant snippets into each answer, entirely offline.

Drawbacks: retrieval works from snippets, so answers can miss context spread across a long document.

07Open WebUI

Best for

A shared, self-hosted chat for a team

Licence

Open WebUI License — BSD-3-based, with a branding clause since April 2025

Runs on

A server you control (Docker or Python)

A browser-based chat interface that most teams pair with Ollama. It has users and roles, document retrieval and tools — effectively a private ChatGPT for an office, hosted on your own machine or server.

Drawbacks: needs a server and someone to maintain it. Deployments with more than 50 users in 30 days must keep the Open WebUI branding unless they buy an enterprise licence.

08LocalAI

Best for

Developers who want an OpenAI-compatible API locally

Licence

MIT

Runs on

Docker, Linux, macOS

A drop-in replacement for the OpenAI API that runs language, image and audio models on your own hardware, including machines without a graphics card. Any tool that talks to OpenAI can be pointed at it — OpenClerq included, through its OpenAI-compatible provider setting.

Drawbacks: aimed at developers rather than office users.

How to choose

• "I just want to try a local model." LM Studio or Jan.
• "I want to ask questions about our documents." AnythingLLM, or GPT4All on modest hardware.
• "The whole office needs a private chat." Open WebUI on a server, with Ollama behind it.
• "The same checks and calculations run every week, and I need a record." OpenClerq, with Ollama or LM Studio as the model runner.
• "I am building something." Ollama or LocalAI as the model server.

These combine: Ollama or LM Studio runs the model; the others are what you work in. For hardware and setup, see how to run AI locally for office work.

Frequently asked questions