Lumo
Proton's hosted AI assistant with zero-access encryption of saved chats and a strict no-logs policy.
Reviewed by Marcus Holmberg
Replace today:
ChatGPT Google Gemini Microsoft Copilot Perplexity
The Best Private AI Tools in 2026: Local & Hosted
Private alternatives to ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, vetted against our public criteria.
Showing 9 of 9
Grouped by threat level
Covered Easy start and good defaults for everyone
Duck.ai
DuckDuckGo's private AI chat that lets you talk to multiple models with no account and no training on your prompts.
Apple Intelligence
Apple's AI. On-device where it can, with verifiable Private Cloud Compute for the rest.
Hardened Some setup and real gains for the willing
Skales
Skales is a local AI desktop agent that runs on your computer with any AI provider you choose. All conversations and data stay on your machine, and you control which model and which API keys you use.
Ollama
Ollama lets you download and run large language models locally via a simple CLI and REST API. Supports a growing library of open models including Llama, Mistral, and Gemma on Windows, Mac, and Linux with no data sent to the cloud.
llamafile
A Mozilla project that packages a complete LLM and its runtime into a single executable file. Download one file, run it on Windows, Mac, or Linux with no installation, no dependencies, and no network connection required.
Ensu
Offline AI chat from Ente that runs models entirely on your device, with no network calls required.
KoboldCpp
KoboldCpp is a self-contained local AI inference tool with a built-in web UI. It runs GGUF text, image, and speech models with no installation beyond a single binary, primarily aimed at creative writing and roleplay workflows.
No matches for those filters.
How they compare
Mainstream AI assistants log your prompts and can train on what you type, pinning every conversation to the profile behind your account. There are two private ways out, and both are below. Hosted assistants still send your prompt to a server, but to providers that contractually do not train on your chats and keep little or nothing. Local tools run an open model directly on your own machine, so the text never leaves your computer and works with no account. The picks run from the easiest swap to the most private.
Why you can’t just make ChatGPT private
There is no setting inside a mainstream assistant that turns off the part you are worried about. The prompt has to reach the company’s servers for the model to answer, and once it is there the provider decides whether it becomes training data and whether it joins the profile attached to your account. Opt-out toggles help at the margin, but they sit on top of a design built to read and learn from what you type. The fix is not a better setting. It is a tool that either does not log your prompts or never receives them, which is what every pick here is built around.
Hosted or local: how far should you go?
A hosted assistant like Lumo is the one-click replacement. Your prompt still travels to a server, so you are trusting a provider’s no-training pledge and its retention settings, but a good one collects almost nothing and operates under privacy-friendly law. A local model run through Ollama is the stronger posture: inference happens on your device, so there is no server to log or train on what you type, and it keeps answering with the network off. The trade is convenience and raw capability for control. Both map onto our threat levels: the hosted picks sit at Covered, the local runners at Hardened.
How we pick
Every tool here is judged against our public listing criteria. For a hosted assistant that means a clear no-training pledge, minimal logging, no advertising profile built from your questions, and ideally an open-source client under privacy-friendly law. For a local tool it means running open-weight models offline while being open source itself and not phoning home. We weigh jurisdiction rather than treat it as pass-or-fail, and we only list a tool we would route our own questions through.
What to look for in a private AI tool
For a hosted assistant, the provider’s commitments are what protect you: a clear no-training pledge backed by minimal retention, with no advertising profile built quietly from your prompts. For a local tool, the protection is structural, since the text simply never leaves your device, so the things to check are open weights and an open-source runner that operates fully offline. Hardware matters only on the local route, where bigger models want more memory and a stronger graphics card. Either way, the absence of a profile built from your questions is the point, and it is what separates these from an assistant that learns from everything you type.
How to switch
Point your everyday questions at one of the hosted picks and use it the way you used the mainstream tool. For anything sensitive, drop down to a local model where the text never leaves your computer. If you are leaving a specific assistant, our ChatGPT alternatives page walks through the move. The honest catch is that the largest mainstream models still lead on the hardest problems, so you may keep one mainstream account for those and simply stop feeding it the rest of your life. To cut Google’s AI out of the wider picture, the de-Google playbook covers the rest of the ecosystem.
Frequently asked
- Should I pick a local or a hosted AI tool?
- Start hosted. A no-log hosted assistant is a one-click swap for ChatGPT and keeps your prompts out of a training set. Drop down to a local model, where nothing leaves your machine at all, for anything you would not want sitting on someone else's server.
- Are private AI tools as capable as ChatGPT?
- For everyday writing and coding help, yes. The very largest mainstream models still lead on the hardest tasks, so some people keep one mainstream account for those and route everything else through a private tool.
- Do local AI models work without internet?
- Yes. Once you have downloaded a model it runs entirely on your own machine, fully offline, with no account and nothing sent anywhere. The connection is only needed for the initial download.
- What does a no-training pledge actually protect?
- It means the provider commits not to feed your prompts and replies back into the next version of its model. Without that pledge, anything you type can become training data, which is how a private detail can later surface in someone else's answer. It is the single most important promise to check on a hosted assistant.
- What hardware do I need to run a model locally?
- Smaller open-weight models run on an ordinary laptop, while larger ones want plenty of RAM and a capable graphics card. The usual approach is to start with a small model and scale up only as far as your machine stays comfortable, so you are not forced to buy new hardware to begin.
- Is a hosted private assistant really private if it still sees my prompt?
- It is private in the sense that the provider does not log or train on what you ask, but you are still trusting that promise rather than removing the server entirely. That is the honest difference from a local model, where there is no server to trust at all. Pick the level that matches how sensitive the work is.