Cedar Assistant vs Brae

Cedar brings on-device AI, your own Ollama server, and cloud providers into one workspace for iPhone and iPad. Choose a model for each conversation and keep your chats organized in one place. Use Apple Intelligence on supported devices, run downloadable models including Gemma locally, or connect to your own Ollama server. Add your own API keys to chat with models from OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, and Google Gemini. Switch providers and models, adjust conversation settings, and customize your instructions and appearance. Attach files, generate images with supported OpenAI and Gemini models, and follow source citations when available. Access OpenAI Agents and Claude Managed Agents, or connect your own n8n workflows. View agent activity and respond to supported approval and sign-in requests from your conversation. Cloud agent features require the appropriate provider account and API access. Record or import audio in Notetaker, then create transcripts and summaries with supported options. Adaptive layouts make room for your conversations on iPhone and iPad, with Book and Split View layouts for iPhone Duo. Choose between local models, your own server, and connected cloud services. Provider API keys are stored in Apple Keychain. Cloud services require your own account and API credentials; provider charges may apply. Downloadable models require compatible hardware and available storage. Features vary by device, operating system, model, and provider.

Brae is a local-first AI assistant for daily work and personal notes. It gives you a calm place to chat, capture ideas, review meetings, and keep useful context on your device. Use Brae to: - Chat with an on-device assistant for everyday questions and drafts. - Talk in Live mode, with typed fallback when speech is unavailable. - Use See World to ask about what the camera sees, powered by an on-device vision model when available. - Capture Meeting Notes, edit the transcript, and save it to your Library. - Review saved notes, call records, imported files, and generated artifacts in Library. - Keep Today focused on local follow-ups from your own notes and calls. - Manage local models in Model Setup, including downloads you explicitly choose. - Control privacy-sensitive features from Settings. Brae is built around local-first behavior. There is no account, no analytics, no advertising, and no tracking. Your chats, transcripts, notes, files, memory, and settings stay on your device by default. Brae does not operate a Bubustudio backend that stores your content. Network use is explicit and user-initiated: - Model downloads happen only when you choose to download a local model from Hugging Face. - Location, nearby-place, destination, and route lookups use Apple MapKit and Core Location only when you ask. - Optional iCloud sync is off by default and, when enabled, uses your private CloudKit database. - Optional web search is off by default. When enabled, Brae sends the search query to DuckDuckGo’s keyless Instant Answer API so results can be returned.