Skip to content
BetterOpenSource

Lobe Chat vs Jan

A side-by-side comparison of two open-source tools to help you choose the right one.

Feature
SummaryA beautiful, extensible AI chat framework.An offline AI assistant that runs on your device.
GitHub stars56K30K
LicenseSource AvailableAGPL 3.0
LanguageTypeScriptTypeScript
PricingFree & Open SourceFree & Open Source
Self-hostable
ReplacesChatGPT, ClaudeChatGPT, GitHub Copilot
Rating4.6 / 54.6 / 5

Lobe Chat features

  • Plugin marketplace and custom assistant store
  • Text-to-speech and speech-to-text
  • Multi-modal vision support
  • Installable PWA with polished UI
  • One-click deploy to Vercel or Docker

Jan features

  • Runs open models entirely offline on CPU or GPU
  • Cross-platform desktop app (macOS, Windows, Linux)
  • Optional connection to remote model APIs
  • Local API server compatible with OpenAI clients
  • No telemetry by default

Lobe Chatpros & cons

Pros

  • Best-in-class visual design
  • Rich plugin ecosystem
  • Trivial to deploy

Cons

  • Some advanced features assume cloud deployment
  • License has usage conditions for commercial hosting

Janpros & cons

Pros

  • Genuinely private and offline-first
  • Simple, friendly desktop UX
  • Doubles as a local OpenAI-compatible server

Cons

  • Local model quality depends on your hardware
  • Smaller plugin ecosystem than web apps

Command Palette

Search for a command to run...