MLC Chat vs PocketPal AI
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.
PocketPal AI
Engage in secure, private conversations with advanced AI models directly on your device. This app enables offline AI interactions, ensuring your data never leaves your device. Discover and download AI models from Hugging Face for a personalized experience.
- Offline AI Chatting
- Secure and Private Conversations
- Hugging Face Model Integration
- Downloadable GGUF Models
- Local Data Processing
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Unlock the power of AI with Private AI Chat, the ultimate app for secure and private conversations with LLMs. The app brings the cutting-edge AI directly to your device, ensuring your chats remain confidential and offline. Key Features: - Offline Chatting: Interact with advanced AI models directly on your device without the need for an internet connection. - Hugging Face Integration: Search for GGUFs on Hugging Face directly within the app, bookmark or download your favorites. - Secure & Private: Your data never leaves your device. All conversations are processed locally, providing security and peace of mind. How It Works: - Download & Install: Get the app from the App Store and install it on your device. - Download Model Weights: Connect to the internet to download the required model weights (in GGUF format, e.g., from Hugging Face). - Chat Offline: Once setup is complete, enjoy private, offline conversations with the model anytime, anywhere.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: MLC Chat at none against PocketPal AI's 10. PocketPal AI's advantage is update cadence (every 2 weeks vs every 2 months) and iOS requirement (15.1 vs 17.0). On price, rating, review sentiment and ratings volume 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. PocketPal AI sells 10 one-off in-app purchases. MLC Chat asks for nothing beyond the download.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.2 for MLC Chat against 4.1 for PocketPal AI. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 84 and 164 respectively. Written reviews split almost evenly too, at 68% and 68% positive.
MLC Chat ships an update every 2 months, PocketPal AI every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 24, 2026 and October 25, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | MLC Chat | PocketPal AI |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.2 (84 ratings) — better | 4.1 (164 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 68.3% of reviews — better | 67.8% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 84 | 164 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Every 2 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 15.1 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 1.7 GB | 88 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 17+ |
| Developer | Tianqi Chen | Gooya UG (haftungsbeschraenkt) |
Customer experience
MLC Chat
PocketPal AI
User reviews
MLC Chat
From 84 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Runs fast locally
- ✅ Works offline
- 💰 Free to use
- 👍 Easy to use
- 💡 Supports various LLM models
Room to improve
- ⚠️ Limited model selection
- 📉 High VRAM requirements
- 📱 Incompatible with older devices
- ❌ Crashes on some devices/models
- 🗄️ Cannot save conversations
PocketPal AI
From 164 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🎨 Beautiful and clean UI/UX design
- 🤖 Extensive model support from Hugging Face
- 🔒 Privacy-focused offline functionality
- 💰 Completely free with no monetization
- ⚙️ Highly customizable model settings
Room to improve
- 🐛 Frequent crashes on various iOS versions
- 📵 Models fail to load after downloading
- ❌ Markdown and LaTeX rendering not supported
- ⚠️ Context limit causes chat interruptions
- 🔌 Stability issues after recent updates
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
PocketPal AI
Reported bugs
13 issues- App crashes on launch or during model loading
- Models download but fail to load
- App crashes on iPadOS 26.4 and iOS 17.2
- Freezing and artifacts with large models
- Chat session doesn't persist when switching apps
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- Scroll functionality broken in Settings and Hugging Face search
- Chat display goes blank when keyboard closes
- EOS token visible in responses
- Model download failures partway through
- App incompatible with iPhone 7 Plus and iPhone SE2
- Model loading fails on older iOS versions (16.4, 16.5)
- Cannot delete downloaded models in progress
- App doesn't default to single loaded model
Requested features
17 requests- iOS Shortcuts integration support
- Markdown and LaTeX rendering in chat display
- Increase n_predict token limit beyond 4096
- macOS version release
- Native iPad-optimized interface
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- Agentic tools (web search, calculator)
- Image input support for multimodal models
- Text-to-speech (TTS) functionality
- Voice input/Whisper model support
- Chat message editing and deletion
- Sliding context window for long conversations
- Stop iCloud model backups
- Better VoiceOver accessibility labels
- Support for newer model versions (Ministral 3, Deepseek)
- MLX framework support
- File upload capabilities
- Chat history management and organization
In-app purchases
MLC Chat
No in-app purchases
PocketPal AI
- CyberSec Mentor$0.99
- Social Caption Builder$0.99
- Romance Companion$1.99
Show 7 moreShow fewer
- Roleplay Companion$1.99
- Code Companion$1.99
- SketchPal$2.99
- PocketPal Plus$3.99
- PocketPal Plus$8.99
- PocketPal Plus$22.99
- PocketPal Plus$44.99
Questions
Is MLC Chat free?
Is PocketPal AI free?
Which has better reviews, MLC Chat or PocketPal AI?
Do MLC Chat or PocketPal AI have ads?
Which is updated more often, MLC Chat or PocketPal AI?
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