Comparison

CoreAI Zoo vs RootDeck

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

Head to head
About

CoreAI Zoo

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CoreAI Zoo puts the open-weight AI model zoo on your iPhone, iPad and Mac. Pick a model, download it once, and run it entirely on your device. No account, no server, and nothing you type, say or photograph ever leaves the device. CHAT Stream answers from open language models such as Qwen3, Gemma, LFM2.5, Granite and Mistral, from 0.6B to 30B+ parameters depending on your device's memory. Vision-language models (Qwen3-VL, MiniCPM-V, LFM2.5-VL) answer questions about your photos. VISION Ask questions about an image, read text with on-device OCR, and describe what the camera sees. AUDIO Transcribe speech with Whisper large-v3-turbo, Parakeet and Qwen3-ASR. Talk to an audio-understanding model, generate speech with Kokoro and VoxCPM, and try on-device music generation. CAMERA Live depth estimation, object detection (YOLOX, RF-DETR), action recognition and super-resolution on the camera feed. TOOLS Experimental models such as diffusion-based language models. BENCH Measure load time, tokens per second and memory for any chat model on your own hardware. HOW IT WORKS Every model runs through Core ML on Apple silicon. Weights are downloaded from the Hugging Face Hub on first use over HTTPS, then cached, so the app works offline afterwards. One model is resident at a time to stay within memory limits. New models arrive through a live catalog without an app update. GETTING STARTED Start with Qwen3-0.6B (454 MB) for the fastest first run. Larger models state the free space and memory they need; a recent iPhone Pro or an Apple silicon Mac runs the mid-size ones comfortably. Model weights follow their own licenses, listed on each model's Hugging Face page. The app itself is BSD-3-Clause and part of the open CoreAI model zoo. Report issues and request models at github.com/john-rocky/coreai-model-zoo.

About

RootDeck

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Manage your servers straight from your iPhone and iPad. RootDeck is a fast, secure SSH and SFTP client — a full terminal and file manager in your pocket. Connect directly to your own servers — no RootDeck account, no cloud in between. Built for developers, sysadmins, and DevOps who need their infrastructure on the go. Features: • Interactive SSH terminal • SFTP file browser and transfers • Upload, download, copy, move, rename, and delete remote files • Password and SSH key authentication • Jump host support for reaching servers behind a bastion • Host key verification to protect against MITM attacks • Saved server profiles • Face ID or Touch ID app lock • Server availability monitoring • Support for Linux, macOS, and Windows OpenSSH servers Credentials are stored securely in Apple Keychain. SSH connections, commands, and transferred files go directly between your device and the servers you choose. RootDeck does not collect analytics and does not send your server data to the developer.

Screenshots

CoreAI Zoo4 screens
RootDeck4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: CoreAI Zoo at daily against RootDeck's weekly. RootDeck's advantage is iOS requirement (17.0 vs 27.0). On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.

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

CostPrice Ā· In-app purchases Ā· Ads Ā· Monetization

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

UpkeepUpdate frequency

CoreAI Zoo ships an update daily, RootDeck weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 13, 2026 and October 8, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences Ā· 4 level
CoreAI Zoo versus RootDeck: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterCoreAI ZooRootDeck
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyDaily — betterWeekly
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad, Mac — better
Requires iOS27.017.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size11 MB14 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperDaisuke MajimaEvgenii Lav

In-app purchases

None

CoreAI Zoo

No in-app purchases

None

RootDeck

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is CoreAI Zoo free?
CoreAI Zoo is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is RootDeck free?
RootDeck is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do CoreAI Zoo or RootDeck have ads?
Neither CoreAI Zoo nor RootDeck shows ads.
Which is updated more often, CoreAI Zoo or RootDeck?
CoreAI Zoo ships an update daily, and RootDeck weekly. Most recently, CoreAI Zoo was updated on October 13, 2026 and RootDeck on October 8, 2026.

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