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AI · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to SwiftAI – open-source library to easily build LLM features on iOS/macOS

We built SwiftAI, an open-source Swift library that lets you use Apple’s on-device LLMs when available (Apple opened access in June), and fall back to a cloud model when they aren’t available — all without duplicating code. SwiftAI gives you: - A single, model-agnostic API - An agent/tool loop - Strongly-typed structured outputs - Optional chat state Backstory: We started experimenting with Apple’s local models because they’re free (no API calls), private, and work offline. The problem: not all devices support them (older iPhones, Apple Intelligence disabled, low battery, etc.). That…

SwiftAI is an open-source Swift library for iOS and macOS that enables developers to build language model features using Apple's on-device LLMs when available, with automatic fallback to cloud models on unsupported… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 1 we have checked on their own sites, 1 of them free or with a free tier.

  1. 1

    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 →

  2. 2
    Swift AI▲243

    A.I. and machine learning library written in Swift

    2016 · github.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    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 →

  4. 4

    Hey everyone, We have been building SecureAI Tools -- an open-source application layer for ChatGPT and ChatPDF-like AI tools. It works with locally running LLMs as well as with OpenAI-compatible APIs. For local LLMs, it supports Ollama which supports all the gguf/ggml models. Currently, it has two features: Chat-with-LLM, and Chat-with-PDFs. It is optimized for self-hosting use cases and comes with basic user management features. Here are some quick demos: * Chat with documents using OpenAI's GPT3.5 model: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br2D3G9O47s * Chat with documents…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    Native Swift apps + a real cloud database. One prompt away.

    Mar 2026 · nativeline.ai · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    First TTS model to support all 22 Indic languages + English

    2024 · its alternatives →

  7. 7
    Lekh AI▲80

    Run powerful AI models on your Mac:fully offline and private

    Jan 2026 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    Hey HN, I’ve built Open Codex, a fully local, open-source alternative to OpenAI’s Codex CLI. My initial plan was to fork their project and extend it. I even started doing that. But it turned out their code has several leaky abstractions, which made it hard to override core behavior cleanly. Shortly after, OpenAI introduced breaking changes. Maintaining my customizations on top became increasingly difficult. So I rewrote the whole thing from scratch using Python. My version is designed to support local LLMs. Right now, it only works with phi-4-mini (GGUF) via…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9IB

    I’ve been playing around with local LLMs for the past couple of months and decided to build something that can run on an iPhone. It’s a universal app built with SwiftUI and the excellent ggml library. The model is an SFT fine tuned and 4 bit quantised version of the RedPajama-INCITE-Chat-3B-v1 OSS LLM. It works reasonably well on recent-ish (~3 year old) iPhones, iPads and Macs. It was launched on the App Store yesterday[1] and Product Hunt today[2]. It seems to be reasonably ok at natural language interactions, but given its size, does pretty badly at coding and reasoning. Also, it…

    2023 · its alternatives →

  10. 10
    LLM Gatewayfree tier▲296

    I built an OpenAI-compatible LLM gateway that routes requests to OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama, vLLM, llama-server, SGLang... anything that speaks /v1/chat/completions. Single Go binary, one YAML config file, no infrastructure. It does the things you'd expect from this kind of gateway... semantic routing via a three-layer cascade (keyword heuristics, embedding similarity, LLM classifier) that picks the best model when clients omit the model field, weighted round-robin load balancing across local inference servers with health checks and failover. The part I think is most…

    2025 · llmgateway.io · its alternatives →

  11. 11
    traceAI▲273

    Open-source LLM tracing that speaks GenAI, not HTTP.

    Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    This lets you talk to local LLMs in Apple Notes. I saw Obsidian Ollama (https://github.com/hinterdupfinger/obsidian-ollama) and thought it was handy, but I'm too lazy to migrate away from the Apple ecosystem, so I quickly hacked this together. I tend to use Notes as a scratchpad for prompts, so it's nice to do some quick inference without leaving the app. Notes doesn't really support plugins so I'm using the macOS accessibility API for reading selections and then stream responses using the clipboard (not ideal but it works).

    2024 · smallest.app · its alternatives →

  13. 13GL

    Hey everyone! I made a Mac app for exploring large language models. It’s fast, small, has a tiny memory footprint. It’s immutable by design with both immediate time travel and automatic versioning as foundational elements. The app is written in Swift and a bit of Rust for the tokenizer. I used SwiftUI for structure and animations and Cocoa for advanced behavior. All storage is SQLite and local-only. You can go through the database as needed and backup it as well. The app has support for variants, which is the `n` parameter in the OpenAI chat completion API—equivalent to the drafts feature in…

    2023 · thellm.app · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    Hey HN, I am proud to show you guys that I have built an open source alternative to Azure OpenAI services. Azure OpenAI services was born out of companies needing enhanced security and access control for using different GPT models. I want to build an OSS version of Azure OpenAI services that people could self host in their own infrastructure. "How can I track LLM spend per API key?" "Can I create a development OpenAI API key with limited access for Bob?" "Can I see my LLM spend breakdown by models and endpoints?" "Can I create 100 OpenAI API keys that my students could use in a classroom…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    Hey HN, Henry and Roman here - we've been building a cross-platform framework for deploying LLMs, VLMs, Embedding Models and TTS models locally on smartphones. Ollama enables deploying LLMs models locally on laptops and edge severs, Cactus enables deploying on phones. Deploying directly on phones facilitates building AI apps and agents capable of phone use without breaking privacy, supports real-time inference with no latency, we have seen personalised RAG pipelines for users and more. Apple and Google actively went into local AI models recently with the launch of Apple Foundation Frameworks…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16
    Taylor AI▲118

    Fine-tune open source LLMs in minutes

    2023 · trytaylor.ai · its alternatives →

  17. 17
    LM Studio▲209

    Discover, download, and run local LLMs (incl. DeepSeek R1)

    2025 · lmstudio.ai · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    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 →

  19. 19

    The fast, easy and cheap OpenAI alternative

    2023 · lemonfox.ai · its alternatives →

  20. 20MG

    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 →

  21. 21

    Hi HN, I'm excited to share Bodhi App, a tool designed to simplify running open-source Large Language Models (LLMs) locally on your laptops. While we currently support M2 Macs, we plan to support other platforms as our community grows. # Problem To use LLMs, you typically need to purchase a subscription from providers like OpenAI or Anthropic, or use OpenAI API credits with compatible Chat UIs. These options can not only burden you financially, but also raise data security and privacy concerns. Many laptops are capable of running powerful open-source LLMs, but for non-tech users, setting…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22
    TableAI▲11

    LLM-first Native Mac SQL client

    Jun 2026 · tableai.org · its alternatives →

  23. 23AT

    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 →

  24. 24

    i built an open source version of OpenAI Assistants API it's compatible with any LLM & embeddings model and u can swap it out for OpenAI assistants API with just one line of code. if you want this let me know 👇

    2023 · twitter.com · its alternatives →

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