MLC Chat vs Local Brain
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
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.
- Local AI model chat
- Offline functionality
- No internet required
- Privacy-focused
- Open-source project integration
- Downloadable language models
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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.
Local Brain
This app allows you to run powerful AI language models directly on your device, ensuring complete privacy and offline functionality. Select from various models and manage multiple conversations simultaneously for a personalized AI experience.
- Run AI models locally
- Full offline capability
- Choose from multiple models
- Create multiple chat contexts
- Privacy-focused AI
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Run Large Language Models locally on your device with full offline capability. You can choose from multiple available models and create multiple chat contexts using different models. The power of AI in your pocket without hurting your privacy.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: MLC Chat at 4.2 against Local Brain's 1.3. MLC Chat also leads on review sentiment (68% vs 30%) and ratings volume (78 vs 6). Local Brain's advantage is update cadence (every 10 days vs every 2 months). On price, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model 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
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
MLC Chat holds the better App Store score, 4.2 against 1.3. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: MLC Chat has 78 ratings behind it against 6, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 68% of MLC Chat's written reviews are positive against 30% of Local Brain's.
MLC Chat ships an update every 2 months, Local Brain every 10 days. The most recent releases landed on August 19, 2026 and July 5, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | MLC Chat | Local Brain |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.2 (78 ratings) — better | 1.3 (6 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 68.3% of reviews — better | 30.4% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 78 — better | 6 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Every 10 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 1.7 GB | 8 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Tianqi Chen | Michal Jach |
Customer experience
MLC Chat
Local Brain
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
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- 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
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- 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
Local Brain
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
MLC Chat
No in-app purchases
Local Brain
No in-app purchases
