On‑Device AI vs Pico Buddy
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
On‑Device AI
Transform your device into a private AI assistant for meetings and complex tasks. Features include speaker diarization, live transcription, and specialized subagents for research, analysis, and writing. Control your AI via messaging apps, with options for 100% offline processing or cloud connectivity.
- Speaker Diarization for meeting transcripts
- Real-time live transcription
- Natural AI speech generation
- Deploy specialized AI subagents
- AI-powered web browser automation
- Control AI via messaging apps
- 100% offline processing option
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On-Device AI puts chat, listening, transcription, notes, and research in one private app for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Vision Pro. Your data stays on your device. Download a model once and keep working on a plane, on the subway, or without a signal. Chats, documents, recordings, and notes stay on your device. Online providers and web features are optional and work only after you enable them. ONE APP, YOUR WAY Open every workspace from a customizable Menu. Keep favorites under Pinned and everything else close by under Available. AI CHAT Chat with local or cloud models. • Run local models from families such as Gemma, Qwen, DeepSeek, and Mistral, or connect a cloud provider account or your own model server • Browse, download, and manage models that fit your device, including ones for text, vision, reasoning, and tools • Import GGUF models from Hugging Face; the app checks the chat template and sets it up before downloading • Queue follow-up questions while a reply runs, and switch chats without losing it • Drop in documents, images, and scanned PDFs; approve private on-device OCR only when a PDF needs it • Fork any conversation and compare several models on the same prompt • Let the model use tools for calculations, web requests, documents, Calendar, and Reminders, and review proposed changes before they apply • Create reusable Agent Profiles, then add AI Skills, MCP servers, and tools from one clearer Agent Workflows setup • Keep facts you repeat often in Global Memory LISTEN LIBRARY AND RSS FEEDS Read less, listen more. • Turn PDFs, Markdown, plain text, web articles, and scanned books into a listening queue • Scan photographed pages, correct the OCR the app runs on device, and keep each page with its spoken text • Follow sites through RSS, Atom, and JSON feeds, then send articles to Up Next • Choose Apple voices or local neural voices, follow along in the reader, and set a sleep timer VOICE NOTE, VOICE TYPING, AND TEXT TO SPEECH Speak instead of typing, and listen instead of reading. • Record and transcribe meetings, lectures, interviews, and quick ideas • Dictate with Voice Typing on Mac or the voice keyboard on iPhone and iPad • Transcribe with Apple Speech, Whisper, Parakeet, Nemotron, Qwen3-ASR, MOSS, and other engines • Turn text, or text captured from a photo, into audio with Apple voices, Kokoro, Supertonic, VoxCPM2, IndexTTS2, and other engines • Export transcripts as text, subtitles, or Markdown AI SEARCH AND AI BROWSER Research with a second pair of hands. • Search the web in a conversation and let the model read the results for you • Browse with tabs, profiles, history, and downloads, then ask your model to read, assist, or act on the page • Hand a task to the browser agent, watch each step, and take over whenever you want KNOWLEDGE AND TEXT NOTE Give your AI your own material to work from. • Add PDFs, text, Markdown, code, images, and website content to a private searchable library • Write and edit Markdown notes in the app • Import AI chats, voice notes, Text to Speech items, and AI Search results • Tune retrieval and index edited content again APP HELP Ask how a feature or setting works. App Help answers from a guide that ships inside the app, keeps help out of your saved chats, and points to the right settings. MADE FOR APPLE DEVICES • Native layouts adapt from focused navigation on iPhone to category sidebars on larger screens • Widgets for Listen, Voice Note, Text Note, and Quick Actions • Siri, Apple Shortcuts, App Intents, the Mac menu bar, and keyboard shortcuts you can customize • Apple hardware acceleration for supported local models • Store models internally, on an external drive, or on a shared volume, with separate tools for cleanup and recovery • Interface in English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, and Traditional Chinese EULA: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Pico Buddy
This AI chat application operates entirely on your device, ensuring all conversations and data remain private. It offers features like summarization, translation, grammar correction, and email rewriting without requiring an internet connection or account creation.
- On-device AI chat
- Offline summarization
- Offline translation (20 languages)
- Grammar correction
- Email rewriting
- Custom AI modes
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Pico Buddy is a private AI chat app that runs entirely on your device — no internet, no account, no data ever leaves your phone. Ask questions, summarize articles, translate text, fix grammar, rewrite emails, and chat freely — all powered by a built-in AI model that works offline, anywhere. FEATURES • Chat — have a real conversation with an on-device AI, with full history • Summarize — paste any text and get a concise summary instantly • Translate — translate between 20 languages without sending data to a server • Email — rewrite drafts in the perfect professional tone • Fix Grammar — correct errors without changing your voice • Custom Modes — create your own AI tools with custom prompts PRIVACY FIRST Everything runs on your device. No server, no account, no conversation data shared with anyone — ever. PRO UNLOCK (one-time purchase) Unlock Summarize, Translate, Email, Fix Grammar, and Custom Modes with a single one-time purchase. No subscription. DISCLAIMER AI responses may contain errors. Pico Buddy is not intended for medical, legal, safety-critical, or any other high-stakes purposes. Results are provided as-is and are intended for personal reference only. LEGAL Privacy Policy: https://private-intelligence.ai/apps/pico-buddy/privacy/ Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: On‑Device AI at 4.4 against Pico Buddy's 1.0. On‑Device AI also leads on update cadence (fortnightly vs every 24 months) and ratings volume (163 vs 1). Pico Buddy's advantage is iOS requirement (13.0 vs 18.0). On price, 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. On‑Device AI sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $3.99 per month and Pico Buddy sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
On‑Device AI holds the better App Store score, 4.4 against 1.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: On‑Device AI has 163 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.
On‑Device AI ships an update fortnightly, Pico Buddy every 24 months. The most recent releases landed on November 8, 2026 and November 4, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | On‑Device AI | Pico Buddy |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.4 (163 ratings) — better | 1.0 (1 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 63.6% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 163 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Fortnightly — better | Every 24 months |
| Ads | No | — |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Freemium |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac, Vision Pro — better | — |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 | 13.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 1.8 GB | 767 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Zijie Deng | Private Intelligence Inc. |
Bugs and requests
On‑Device AI
Reported bugs
3 issues- Crashes on startup
- Model selection issues
- Inability to copy generated text
Requested features
9 requests- Automated multi-character conversations
- Character set saving and syncing
- Streamlined search integration
- UI optimization for icons
- Remote endpoint support for multi-agents
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- HomeKit integration
- Improved documentation
- Enlarged agent input window
- Per-agent model assignment
Pico Buddy
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
On‑Device AI
- Pro Member Subscription$3.991 Month
- Pro Member Subscription$34.991 Year
- Lifetime Pro Member$49.99
- Lifetime Pro Member$99.99
Pico Buddy
- Pico Buddy Pro$4.99









