Jan AI is one of the easiest ways I have seen to run a local LLM without wanting to throw your PC out a window. The interface is familiar, clean, and forgiving, and you can set up projects and start chatting even if you have never touched a local AI model before. It is completely free, open source, and runs on your own machine, not someone else’s cloud, which for us is a big plus.

I have personally run out of gas fighting with Python, CUDA, and missing DLLs on some open-source chat apps and given up. Jan skips most of that pain.

What Jan actually does

Jan is a desktop AI chat app for Windows, macOS, and Linux that gives you ChatGPT-style conversations while keeping everything local. It bundles support for popular open-source models like Llama, Mistral, Qwen, Gemma, and others behind a simple UI.

You install Jan, open the built-in model hub, pick a model, click start, and type. No subscriptions, no accounts, no browser tabs full of cookies tracking your prompts.

Jan also has its own Jan model, which installs very easily, but be prepared, it is a bit over 5.7 GB. You will want some free disk space before hitting download.

Local API and developer-friendly extras

This is where Jan gets interesting for power users. It can spin up a local server, usually at localhost:1337, that behaves like the OpenAI API. That means scripts, tools, and apps that normally expect OpenAI can be pointed at Jan instead.

You can also stay fully offline, or optionally connect to cloud models if you want. Jan does not force you either way.

Built-in connectors and project support

Jan includes connectors for services like Gmail, Slack, Figma, and others, so you can work with files and content where you already live. If you like organizing things, projects let you group chats, files, and tasks without everything turning into one giant scroll of AI rambling.

Why you might actually want Jan

If you care about privacy, Jan makes a lot of sense. Your prompts and files stay on your machine unless you choose otherwise. No “oops, we trained on your data” anxiety.

It is also great for:
●Writers who want offline drafting and brainstorming
●Developers testing prompts or building local AI tools
●Researchers working with sensitive documents
●Anyone stuck with unreliable internet
●Anyone looking for free over subscription

I have seen Jan shine after a bad driver update or network outage, when cloud AI tools suddenly become useless. Local still means local.

Key features that matter

●Local model execution, download and run open-source LLMs on your own hardware
●Optional cloud model support, use API keys only if you want
●OpenAI-compatible local API server for scripts and tools
●Cross-platform support, Windows, macOS, Linux
●Clean, beginner-friendly interface
●Fully open source, no lock-in, no hidden nonsense

The downsides, because nothing is perfect

●Model quality depends on what you choose, open-source LLMs are improving fast but still vary
●Hardware matters, larger models need RAM and sometimes a decent GPU. This did not run well on older machines (2 to 3 years old)
●Some tweaking may be needed if you want peak performance

This is not “install and get GPT-4-level answers forever” magic. It is honest local AI, with all the tradeoffs that come with it.

Geek Verdict

Jan AI has a great balance between power and sanity. It is free, open source, privacy-first, and genuinely easy to use, which is rare in the local LLM world. We like the clean interface, the built-in model hub, the local API server, and the fact that it does not fight you every step of the way. The only real downside is disk space and hardware limits. You really need some power in your system to run this well.