Private AI to Chat With PDFs and Documents

SurfSense is an open-source NotebookLM alternative that turns documents into cited answers and editable deliverables on your computer. It's a desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux, aimed at people working with confidential files, research or study material. You don't need an account.

AnythingLLM is an open source AI assistant for people who want to chat with their documents and use AI agents on their own hardware. The desktop app runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, while a Docker deployment supports multiple users on a self-hosted server. No account is required for the desktop app.

Onyx is an AI search and chat platform for teams whose information is spread across workplace apps. It indexes company knowledge so employees can ask questions across sources and get answers grounded in relevant documents. Teams can deploy it in their own cloud or on bare metal, including an air-gapped environment.

LightRAG combines knowledge graphs with vector search to answer questions across a document collection. It's a self-hosted Python framework for developers building document assistants, particularly where answers depend on relationships between facts in different files, such as legal or financial material.

RAGFlow is an Apache 2.0 licensed RAG engine for teams building AI agents that need to answer questions from their own documents. It can run on a self-hosted server through Docker on Windows, macOS or Linux. A separate hosted cloud service is available.

Noema is a private local AI assistant for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Vision Pro. It's for people who want to chat with models and work with their own files on Apple hardware without depending on a cloud service. Local chats can stay on your device, and file retrieval runs there too.

Open Notebook is a self-hosted alternative to Google's NotebookLM for researchers, students, and professionals who want AI help with their own research materials. It runs locally or on your server through Docker and is open source under the MIT license. You choose which content the AI can access and which provider processes it.

Cherry Studio is a free, open source desktop app for people who use several AI models and want their conversations in one place. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. Chats, settings and knowledge base files are stored on your device.

Open WebUI gives individuals and teams a self-hosted place to chat with local LLMs and cloud models. It runs on your own computer or server, including through Docker, and can work entirely offline with local models.

Off Grid AI runs language models on iOS, Android, macOS, Windows and Linux. You can chat, analyze documents and generate images on your own hardware. The mobile app uses the MIT license, while the desktop app uses AGPL.

Whisper Notes is an offline transcription app for iPhone, iPad and Apple Silicon Macs. It's for people recording interviews, lectures or meetings who need the audio and transcripts to stay on their device. It requires no account and has no cloud sync, analytics or tracking.

ScribeDog is a Markdown editor for writers and note-takers who want AI assistance while keeping their documents on their own hardware. It displays formatted text, tables and images instead of Markdown syntax, but saves ordinary .md files that work with Git and other editors. It has a native desktop app and a self-hosted Server Edition available through Docker.

RecurseChat is a paid Mac app for people who want to chat with AI and ask questions about their files on their own computer. It runs local LLMs without an internet connection or a server, keeping local conversations on the device. The same app also connects to Claude and ChatGPT, so you can choose local processing or a cloud provider.

OpenAgent is a self-hosted personal AI assistant that combines document search with agents that can act on your behalf. It's for people who want an assistant on their own computer or server, and teams building agents around their documents and workflows. It runs natively on Windows, macOS and Linux as a single executable. It's free and open source under Apache 2.0.

h2oGPT is a self-hosted ChatGPT alternative for people who want to chat with local models and ask questions about their own documents. The project is archived and no longer maintained. It's open source under Apache 2.0, with support for Linux, macOS, Windows and Docker.

Reor is a local AI note-taking app for people who want to search their own writing, find connections between ideas and ask questions about their notes. The project is archived and no longer maintained. It runs on macOS, Windows and Linux, and it's open source under AGPL-3.0.

QAnything is a self-hosted knowledge base for people and teams who want to ask questions about their own documents, including collections that mix Chinese and English. It can answer in either language regardless of the document's language, and runs locally through Docker on Windows, macOS and Linux.

Lumos is a Chrome extension for asking questions about web pages using models running on your own machine. It's for readers working through long discussions, product reviews, news articles or technical documentation who want summaries and answers tied to the material they're reading. Ollama handles inference locally, without a remote AI server.

Verba is a self-hosted document chatbot for people who want to ask questions across their files and knowledge bases. The project is archived and no longer maintained. It uses Weaviate to find relevant passages and gives those passages to a language model to generate answers.

Scira is an AI search engine for people who want answers backed by sources and control over the application they use for research. It has a hosted website, and you can self-host the open-source application under AGPL-3.0. Its live search relies on internet access and external services; self-hosting doesn't make that research offline.

Kerlig is a paid AI writing assistant for Mac that works with text in the apps you already use. It's aimed at people writing client emails, Slack replies and Jira tickets who want help editing and drafting without moving everything into a browser chat. It runs on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs with macOS 12 or later.

BrainSoup is a proprietary native Windows app for people who want custom AI agents to handle work on their desktop. You can give agents distinct roles and access to different data, then have them collaborate in shared chat rooms. Natural-language conversations guide their tasks and automations.

Anarlog, formerly Hyprnote, is a desktop AI meeting notetaker for people who want to keep private conversations on their own hardware. It captures audio from your device without adding a bot to the call and stays hidden during screen sharing. The app runs on macOS, Windows and Linux; its community application is open source under the MIT license.

Paperless-AI is a self-hosted extension for Paperless-ngx users who want automatic document sorting and chat with their archive. It requires an existing Paperless-ngx instance and runs in Docker, with a browser interface for reviewing and processing documents. The project is no longer maintained.

Cognita is a self-hosted RAG framework for developers building applications that answer questions using their own documents. The project is archived and no longer maintained. It combines a browser interface for document Q&A with reusable components built on LangChain and LlamaIndex, under the Apache 2.0 open-source license.

5ire is a free desktop AI assistant that combines chat, a local document knowledge base and MCP tools. It runs on macOS, Windows and Linux, with Mac downloads for Apple Silicon and Intel. It's for people who want to use their own documents and external tools alongside conversations with local or cloud models.

Morphik Core is a self-hosted multimodal retrieval engine for developers building AI applications around visually rich documents. It searches diagrams, schematics, charts, and datasheets alongside text, so applications can retrieve information that text extraction alone can miss. You can run it on your own server, including through Docker, or use Morphik's hosted service.

NativeMind brings a local AI assistant into Chrome for people who want help with webpages, documents, and writing without sending that content to a cloud model. The browser extension connects to Ollama on your machine, keeping prompts and AI processing on-device. It requires no account and uses the AGPL-3.0 open-source license.

NotebookLlama is a self-hosted NotebookLM alternative for people who want to work with documents through an app they can host and modify. Its browser interface runs locally, while LlamaCloud provides document extraction and indexing. It requires cloud services.

ChatWise is a desktop chat app for connecting different model providers through one interface. It stores data locally; model processing follows the provider you choose. Its official documentation includes Ollama for models running on your own machine, alongside cloud providers connected with your API keys.

Brave Leo is an AI assistant built into the Brave browser, with Bring Your Own Model support for people who want to use their own local or remote models while browsing. It can work with third-party APIs as well as Brave's hosted model choices. The browser runs on macOS, Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS.

Joplin Jarvis is an AI assistant for people who keep their writing, research, or personal knowledge in Joplin on desktop and mobile. It connects conversations to your existing notes and supports local LLMs through Ollama alongside cloud services such as GPT, Claude, Gemini, and Hugging Face.

Witsy is an AGPL-3.0 desktop AI assistant for macOS, Windows and Linux that connects MCP tools to local and cloud models. It's for people who want document chat, writing help and voice features in one app, with a choice of where their models run.

LangBot is a self-hosted AI agent platform for teams that want bots in the messaging apps their customers, coworkers or communities already use. It connects Slack, Discord, Telegram, WeChat and other chat services to models and AI workflows, with a browser dashboard for managing bots across platforms.

Enconvo is a native AI assistant and agent for Mac that can use your screen and selected text as context, then work inside your apps. It's for people who want help with writing, research and everyday tasks alongside the app they're using. A sidebar keeps the agent beside the current app, while text selection tools give quick access to editing and translation.

BoltAI is a native Mac app for people who want local LLMs and cloud AI services in the same workspace. It runs on Intel and Apple Silicon Macs and suits coding, writing, research and document analysis. The interface uses SwiftUI and AppKit.