Comparison

MLC Chat vs iGo

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

MLC Chat

Engage in conversations with open language models directly on your iPad or iPhone. Once a model is downloaded, all interactions occur locally, ensuring privacy and offline functionality without internet access. This app is designed for non-commercial use, allowing you to run various open-source language models on your device.

Highlights
  • Local AI model chat
  • Offline functionality
  • No internet required
  • Privacy-focused
  • Open-source project integration
  • Downloadable language models
Features
Read full description

MLC Chat lets users chat with open language models locally on ipads and iphones. After a model is downloaded to the app, everything runs locally without server support, and it works without internet connections do not record any information. Because the models run locally, it only works for the devices with sufficient VRAM depending on the models being used. MLC Chat is part of open source project MLC LLM, with allows any language model to be deployed natively on a diverse set of hardware backends and native applications. MLC Chat is a runtime that runs different open model architectures on your phone. The app is intended for non-commercial purposes. It allows you to run open-language models downloaded from the internet. Each model can be subject to its respective licenses.

About

iGo

Capture photos and automatically embed location details as a watermark. View your geotagged images on a map and share them with friends. Customize your watermark's appearance to suit your needs.

Highlights
  • Add address watermark to photos
  • View photo locations on map
  • Search photo locations
  • Share photos with watermark
  • Customize watermark style
Features
Read full description

Markto is an app for adding watermarks with address information when taking photos. Features: * Take photos and add address information watermark. * View the location of each photo on the map, support search. * Share pictures with address watermark. * Set your watermark style. It is perfect for the following people: * Explorers who like to walk in the outdoors and record it. * Travelers who like to travel around the world and check their tracks at any time. Privacy agreement:https://sites.google.com/view/markto-policy/privacy-policy

Screenshots

MLC Chat2 screens
iGo3 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: MLC Chat at 4.2 against iGo's 1.0. MLC Chat also leads on ratings volume (78 vs 2). iGo's advantage is iOS requirement (13.0 vs 17.0). On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

MLC Chat holds the better App Store score, 4.2 against 1.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: MLC Chat has 78 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 2 months. The most recent releases landed on October 14, 2026 and October 9, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
MLC Chat versus iGo: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterMLC ChatiGo
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.2 (78 ratings) — better1.0 (2 ratings)
Positive reviews68.3% of reviews—
Number of ratings78 — better2
Update frequencyEvery 2 monthsEvery 2 months
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFreeFree
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPod
Requires iOS17.013.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size1.7 GB54 MB
Age rating17+17+
DeveloperTianqi Chen君程 何

Customer experience

MLC Chat

All ratings78 ratings
Positive83.3%
Neutral3.8%
Negative12.8%
Written reviews63 reviews
Positive68.3%
Neutral12.7%
Negative19.0%

iGo

All ratings2 ratings
Positive0.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative100.0%

Bugs and requests

MLC Chat

Reported bugs

17 issues
  • Phi model crashes on iOS 26.0.1 17 Pro Max
  • App crashes on iPad Pro 4th Gen, iPadOs 17.7
  • RedPajama model crashes app on initialization
  • Update is extremely slow
  • Download model button disabled in new version
Show 12 more
  • RedPajama model crashes, custom model download removed
  • App closes when hitting send on iPhone 13
  • Conversation resets when app is backgrounded
  • Vicuna and Mistral 7B models cause crashes
  • Some 7b q4f16/q4f32 models crash on iPhone 15 Pro
  • App crashes on iPhone 13 mini
  • Cannot load other models from URL
  • Crash on iPhone 12
  • Severe heating and frequency reduction on A15
  • Low VRAM failed initialization on 3GB LP DDR4X phone
  • Cannot run 4bit model on iPhone 15 with 8GB RAM
  • Loading models from HF MLC official Repo causes crashes

Requested features

14 requests
  • Ability to import custom models (from URL/Hugging Face)
  • Support for more specific models (DeepSeek, Phi-2, Gemma 2B/7B, MoE Mixtral 8x7B, LLaVA)
  • History of conversations
  • iOS shortcuts support
  • Ability to export entire responses
Show 9 more
  • Information on VRAM requirements per phone/model
  • Ability to change system message/create custom profiles
  • Ability to edit responses and system prompt
  • Add coffee support
  • Delete downloaded models
  • Change settings per model (repetition penalties, temperature)
  • How-to guide for importing/recompiling LLMs
  • Estimate model compatibility before download
  • Support for CN and ZH languages

iGo

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

None

MLC Chat

No in-app purchases

None

iGo

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is MLC Chat free?
MLC Chat is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is iGo free?
iGo is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, MLC Chat or iGo?
MLC Chat is rated higher. MLC Chat averages 4.2 out of 5 from 78 ratings, while iGo averages 1.0 from 2 ratings.
Do MLC Chat or iGo have ads?
Neither MLC Chat nor iGo shows ads.
Which is updated more often, MLC Chat or iGo?
MLC Chat ships an update every 2 months, and iGo every 2 months. Most recently, MLC Chat was updated on October 14, 2026 and iGo on October 9, 2026.

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