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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Gerbil – an open source desktop app for running LLMs locally

Gerbil is an open source app that I've been working on for the last couple of months. The development now is largely done and I'm unlikely to add anymore major features. Instead I'm focusing on any bug fixes, small QoL features and dependency upgrades. Under the hood it runs llama.cpp (via koboldcpp) backends and allows easy integration with the popular modern frontends like Open WebUI, SillyTavern, ComfyUI, StableUI (built-in) and KoboldAI Lite (built-in). Why did I create this? I wanted an all-in-one solution for simple text and image-gen local LLMs. I got fed up with needing to manage…

Gerbil is an open source desktop application that runs large language models locally on a user's computer. It uses llama.cpp backends and integrates with popular LLM frontends including Open WebUI, SillyTavern, and… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

  1. 1

    I spent the last few days building out a nicer ChatGPT-like interface to use Mistral 7B and Llama 3 fully within a browser (no deps and installs). I’ve used the WebLLM project by MLC AI for a while to interact with LLMs in the browser when handling sensitive data but I found their UI quite lacking for serious use so I built a much better interface around WebLLM. I’ve been using it as a therapist and coach. And it’s wonderful knowing that my personal information never leaves my local computer. Should work on Desktop with Chrome or Edge. Other browsers are adding WebGPU support as well - see…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2
    ChattyUI▲149

    Run open-source LLMs locally in the browser using WebGPU

    2024 · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    Ship AI apps with fewer surprises

    2024 · langtail.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    The low-code platform for testing AI apps

    2024 · langtail.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    Hi folks, we're Debanjum and Saba. We created Khoj as a hobby project 2+ years ago because: (1) Search on the desktop sucked; we just had keyword search on the desktop vs google for the internet; and (2) Natural language search models had become good and easy to run on consumer hardware by this point. Once we made Khoj search incremental, I completely stopped using the default incremental search (C-s) in Emacs. Since then Khoj has grown to support more content types, deeper integrations and chat (using ChatGPT). With Llama 2 released last week, chat models are finally good and easy enough to…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    Hi Hackers, Excited to share a macOS app I've been working on: https://recurse.chat/ for chatting with local AI. While it's amazing that you can run AI models locally quite easily these days (through llama.cpp / llamafile / ollama / llm CLI etc.), I missed feature complete chat interfaces. Tools like LMStudio are super powerful, but there's a learning curve to it. I'd like to hit a middleground of simplicity and customizability for advanced users. Here's what separates RecurseChat out from similar apps: - UX designed for you to use local AI as a daily driver.…

    2024 · recurse.chat · its alternatives →

  7. 7
    OpenUI▲322

    Thesys just open-sourced their generative UI rendering engine. Interesting timing given where Google a2ui and Vercel's json-render are headed. The difference worth noting: a2ui and json-render both treat JSONL as the contract between the LLM and the renderer. Thesys is betting that's the wrong primitive. Their engine uses a code-like syntax (OpenUI Lang) instead — LLM writes it, renderer executes it. The argument is that LLMs are fundamentally better at generating code than generating structured data, so you get cleaner output and ~67% fewer tokens. The broader vision seems to be a…

    Mar 2026 · openui.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8
    Llama 2▲263

    The next generation of Meta's open source LLM

    2023 · developer.meta.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    Hey HN, I made Browser-Use, an open-source tool that lets (all Langchain supported) LLMs execute tasks directly in the browser just with function calling. It allows you to build agents that interact with web elements using natural language prompts. We created a layer that simplifies website interaction for LLMs by extracting xPaths and interactive elements like buttons and input fields (and other fancy things). This enables you to design custom web automation and scraping functions without manual inspection through DevTools. Hasn't this been done a lot of times? Good question, as a general…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10
    Llama▲312

    3.1-405B: an open source model to rival GPT-4o / Claude-3.5

    2024 · developer.meta.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    Hi HN A few folks and I have been working on this project for a couple weeks now. After previously working on the Docker project for a number of years (both on the container runtime and image registry side), the recent rise in open source language models made us think something similar needed to exist for large language models too. While not exactly the same as running linux containers, running LLMs shares quite a few of the same challenges. There are "base layers" (e.g. models like Llama 2), specific configuration to run correctly (parameters, temperature, context window sizes etc). There's…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    A fun, flexible task manager for desktop web

    2021 · llamalife.co · its alternatives →

  13. 13MG

    Hello HN, I've been working on this project for a while, and it has been in an "open" beta for some time. I finally believe it's ready for its first release. I hope you like it. Here are some potential questions that may arise: 1. How does it compare to LM Studio? It's likely that if you're already using LM Studio, you'll continue to do so. This project is designed to be more user-friendly. 2. Is it open-source? No, it is not. 3. Does it use any open-source libraries? Yes, it uses llama.cpp and a few others, as indicated in the license information included with the application. 4. Why is not…

    2023 · avapls.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    Our team just published Geppetto. Geppetto is an open source Slack App to use ChatGPT inside your workspace. It is written in Python and super easy to tinker and fork: - GitHub: https://github.com/Deeptechia/geppetto - Our first public release: https://deeptechia.io/blog/geppetto-ai-companion-for-slack/

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    Hi HN, I spent my easter weekend stuck in the house with COVID and I decided to play with llama.cpp [1] and fauxpilot [2] to see if I could get LLM code assist working on pure CPU. As a proof of concept I'd say I've proven that it's possible. However there's still a lot to do. The auto complete is quite slow at the moment. PRs welcome. [1] https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp [2] https://github.com/fauxpilot/fauxpilot

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    Open-source LLM tracing for agent visibility

    Mar 2026 · breadcrumb.sh · its alternatives →

  17. 17
    NobodyWho▲106

    Hey, Hello, we are the team behind NobodyWho; an open-source plugin that embeds large language models functionality inside Unity and Godot games - completely locally and offline. We try to make it as easy and user friendly as possible to use our plugin, so feel free to create an issue on our GitHub if you have any inconveniences - and we will try to improve it! So why might this interest you: - Written in Rust with llama.cpp bindings and optional GPU back-ends (Vulkan / Metal) for fast inference. - Drop-in nodes / components: add a model asset and a chat or embedding node and get a…

    Aug 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18WE

    Browser LLM demo working on JavaScript and WebGPU. WebGPU is already supported in Chrome, Safari, Firefox, iOS (v26) and Android. Demo, similar to ChatGPT https://andreinwald.github.io/browser-llm/ Code https://github.com/andreinwald/browser-llm - No need to use your OPENAI_API_KEY - its local model that runs on your device - No network requests to any API - No need to install any program - No need to download files on your device (model is cached in browser) - Site will ask before downloading large files (llm model) to browser cache - Hosted on Github…

    2025 · andreinwald.github.io · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    Check out this impressive project that enables running LLMs entirely in the browser using WebGPU. Key features: - Zero token costs, no cloud infrastructure required - Complete data privacy through local processing - Simple 3-line code integration - Built on MLC and Transformer.js The benchmarks show smaller models can effectively handle many common tasks. Currently the project roadmap includes: - No-code AI pipeline builder - Browser-based RAG for document chat - Analytics/logging - Model fine-tuning interface

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20WM

    Try it out! https://glhf.chat/ Hey HN! We’ve been working for the past few months on a website to let you easily run (almost) any open-source LLM on autoscaling GPU clusters. It’s free for now while we figure out how to price it, but we expect to be cheaper than most GPU offerings since we can run the models multi-tenant. Unlike Together AI, Fireworks, etc, we’ll run any model that the open-source vLLM project supports: we don’t have a hardcoded list. If you want a specific model or finetune, you don’t have to ask us for it: you can just paste the Hugging Face link in and…

    2024 · glhf.chat · its alternatives →

  21. 21AT

    I recently built a small open-source tool to benchmark different LLM API endpoints — including OpenAI, Claude, and self-hosted models (like llama.cpp). It runs a configurable number of test requests and reports two key metrics: • First-token latency (ms): How long it takes for the first token to appear • Output speed (tokens/sec): Overall output fluency Demo: https://llmapitest.com/ Code: https://github.com/qjr87/llm-api-test The goal is to provide a simple, visual, and reproducible way to evaluate performance across different LLM providers, including…

    2025 · llmapitest.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    Hi everyone, we’re a small team, supported by Mozilla, who are working on re-imagining a UI for training, tuning and testing local LLMs. Everything is open source. If you’ve been training your own LLMs or have always wanted to, we’d love for you to play with the tool and give feedback on what the future development experience for LLM engineering could look like.

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    What it is A single 45 MB Windows .exe that embeds llama.cpp and a minimal Tk UI. Copy it (plus any .gguf model) to a flash drive, double-click on any Windows PC, and you’re chatting with an LLM—no admin rights, Cloud, or network. Why I built it Existing “local LLM” GUIs assume you can pip install, pass long CLI flags, or download GBs of extras. I wanted something my less-technical colleagues could run during a client visit by literally plugging in a USB drive. How it works PyInstaller one-file build → bundles Python runtime, llama_cpp_python, and the UI into a single PE. On first launch, it…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

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