AlternativesAI-assisted · editor-reviewedUpdated 4 hours ago · 12 min read · by Sanjeet Pal Singh
9 open-source alternatives to ChatGpt
ChatGPT is convenient, but it ties your conversations, data and workflow to a single vendor and its pricing. These open-source assistants let you self-host, run models locally for privacy, and switch freely between providers while keeping a familiar chat experience.
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⚠gpt_academic — low recent activity since this was written.
⚠Open-Assistant — inactive for over a year since this was written.
Living article: rankings and health notes are re-checked against GitHub and community data. Ratings are GitPalace community ratings; stars are GitHub stars.
★ New GitPalace44.4K GitHub starsOtherHealth: Actively maintained
Jan is a desktop assistant built explicitly as an open-source ChatGPT replacement that runs entirely offline on your own machine. It bundles model downloads, a polished chat interface and a local API server, so you get a ChatGPT-like experience without sending anything to the cloud.
Pros
+Fully offline and private by default
+Simple install with a native desktop app on all major platforms
+Can still connect to cloud providers when you want stronger models
Watch-out
−Local model quality and speed depend heavily on your hardware, so answers won't match the frontier models behind ChatGPT on a modest laptop.
★ New GitPalace42.9K GitHub starsMITHealth: Actively maintained
LibreChat is a self-hostable, feature-rich clone of the ChatGPT interface that works with nearly every major model provider. It layers on agents, tools, file handling and multi-user support, making it a strong choice for teams that want a shared ChatGPT-style workspace they control.
Pros
+Familiar ChatGPT-like UI with far more provider choice
+Built-in agents, tool integrations and team features
+Actively developed with frequent releases
Watch-out
−Self-hosting a multi-service stack takes more setup and maintenance than simply logging into ChatGPT.
★ New GitPalace31.9K GitHub starsOtherHealth: Actively maintained
Onyx is an open-source AI platform that pairs a capable chat interface with retrieval over your own documents and applications. Where ChatGPT knows the public web, Onyx is designed to answer questions grounded in your company's internal knowledge while working with any LLM.
Pros
+Deep connectors for grounding answers in your own data
+Enterprise-oriented permissions and self-hosting
+Supports web search, code execution and research workflows
Watch-out
−It is heavier to deploy and more oriented toward organizations than casual individual use.
★ New GitPalace88.7K GitHub starsMITHealth: Actively maintained
NextChat is a lightweight, fast web and desktop chat client that can be deployed in minutes and pointed at your preferred model providers. It reproduces the everyday ChatGPT experience with a clean UI, prompt templates and cross-platform apps.
Pros
+Very easy to self-deploy and quick to load
+Works with many model providers from one interface
+Available as web, desktop and mobile apps
Watch-out
−It is a client rather than a full platform, so you still need API keys or a backend for the models themselves.
★ New GitPalace41.7K GitHub starsGPL-3.0Health: Actively maintained
Chatbox is a desktop AI client for Windows, Mac and Linux that lets you chat with cloud models or local ones from a single, tidy app. It is a natural pick for people who like ChatGPT's simplicity but want their history stored locally and the freedom to switch models.
Pros
+Native desktop experience with local conversation storage
+Bring your own keys and mix providers freely
+Approachable for non-technical users
Watch-out
−Some advanced features live in a non-open-source edition, so the community version is more limited.
★ New GitPalace47.6K GitHub starsAGPL-3.0Health: Actively maintained
TextGen is a private, no-telemetry desktop app for running LLMs locally with text, vision and tool-calling support. It gives you both a chat UI and an OpenAI-compatible API, making it a solid local stand-in for ChatGPT on capable hardware.
Pros
+Completely private with no telemetry
+Broad backend and hardware support, including GPU and CPU-only builds
+Exposes a compatible API for other apps
Watch-out
−Getting the best results means understanding model formats and quantization, which is more technical than ChatGPT.
★ New GitPalace71.3K GitHub starsGPL-3.0Health: Low recent activity
gpt_academic is a practical chat front end for GPT and other LLMs tuned for academic work such as reading, polishing and translating papers. It replaces ChatGPT for researchers who want purpose-built buttons and plugins rather than a general-purpose chat box.
Pros
+Specialized workflows for papers, PDFs and code analysis
+Extensible plugin system with custom shortcuts
+Supports querying several models in parallel
Watch-out
−Documentation and UI are primarily in Chinese, and development activity has slowed recently.
★ New GitPalace54K GitHub starsApache-2.0Health: Actively maintained
goose is a general-purpose open-source AI agent that runs on your machine as a desktop app, CLI and API. Rather than only chatting, it can act on your behalf for research, writing, automation and code, which makes it a more hands-on alternative to ChatGPT's assistant features.
Pros
+Runs locally and works with any LLM you choose
+Goes beyond chat to execute tasks and workflows
+Extensible through open integrations
Watch-out
−Its agentic, action-taking design is more complex to set up and reason about than a plain chat assistant.
★ New GitPalace37.4K GitHub starsApache-2.0Health: Inactive for over a year
Open-Assistant was a community effort to build a fully open chat assistant, complete with an openly licensed conversation dataset used to train it. It remains a landmark reference for a transparent ChatGPT alternative, even though the project has concluded.
Pros
+Entirely open models, data and code
+Transparent about how the assistant was trained
+Historic community project with a reusable dataset
Watch-out
−The project is finished and no longer maintained, so it lags far behind ChatGPT in capability and support.
