A desktop app for downloading and running open-weight language models locally, with a chat interface and a local API server.
LM Studio gives open-source models a graphical front end, so you can browse models, load them, and chat without using the command line. Because inference runs on your own machine, prompts stay local, which suits testing and privacy-sensitive work.
You need one to download models, but chatting with an already-downloaded model works offline.
The app is free to download for personal and commercial use as of writing; check the current terms on the site.
Information and links are accurate as of the time of writing and may change. Always verify on the official site. This is an independent guide, not affiliated with the listed services.