LM Studio is a desktop app for running open-weight language models on your own computer, with a built-in model browser, chat interface and local server. It runs models through llama.cpp and MLX, works offline, and keeps audio and document processing on the device.
The free plan covers local use at no cost - you supply the hardware. Its paid Bionic+ tier ($20/month) adds US-hosted open models with zero data retention for people who want stronger models than their machine can run. Because you pick the weights, you choose each model's behavior, including community fine-tunes with fewer built-in refusals.
