Best tools to run LLMs on your own machine
These tools let you download and run open-weight models locally with full data privacy, from a simple CLI to a polished chat UI.
Recommended tools
Deploying Local LLMs with Ollama
A cross-platform tool that lets you download and run open-source LLMs like Llama, Mistral, and Phi locally on your own machine. It provides a CLI, a local API server, and an OpenAI-compatible endpoint, so you can experiment with models privately — no GPU or cloud account required. Ideal for developers who want offline AI capabilities or need to test prompts before deploying to production.
LM Studio Local Model Client
LM Studio is a desktop application that lets you download and run open-source LLMs locally with a single click. It provides a polished graphical interface for chatting with models, an OpenAI-compatible local API server, and support for GGUF/GGML formats — no command line or GPU expertise required.
Open WebUI
Open WebUI is a feature-rich, self-hosted AI chat interface that supports Ollama and OpenAI-compatible APIs out of the box. It runs fully offline, offers a polished multi-model conversation experience, and includes role management, markdown support, and plugin extensibility for teams and individuals.
vLLM High-Performance Inference Framework
vLLM is a high-throughput inference and serving engine for large language models, using PagedAttention to dramatically improve memory efficiency and throughput. It supports continuous batching, tensor parallelism, and OpenAI-compatible API serving, making it a top choice for deploying LLMs at scale.
llama.cpp
llama.cpp is the lightweight C/C++ inference engine that runs open LLMs efficiently on CPUs and consumer GPUs, serving as the foundation beneath many local AI tools like Ollama and LM Studio. Its GGUF quantization formats let large models fit into modest hardware without dedicated accelerators.
Meta Llama
Llama is Meta's family of open-weight language models — the backbone of the open-source AI ecosystem, deployable locally or on any cloud. Available in multiple sizes from lightweight to frontier-class, Llama models power countless fine-tuned derivatives and give organizations full control over their AI stack.