LM Studio

Ollama with a GUI: discover, download and chat locally.

LM Studio is the desktop app for people who would rather not touch a terminal: browse GGUF and MLX, download, chat, then open the Developer tab and start the local server on localhost:1234/v1.

Same deal as Ollama — unlimited, private, your RAM is the ceiling — with a GUI and a built-in chat. Start the server before your editor tries to call it.

Max context: Whatever your RAM allows
Free tier: Unlimited and private
Requirement: Nothing — no account

Endpoint

Base URLhttp://localhost:1234/v1

Rate limitNone — it is your machine

OpenAI-compatible
text
vision

Code examples

npm install openai

import OpenAI from 'openai'

const client = new OpenAI({
  baseURL: 'http://localhost:1234/v1',
  apiKey: 'not-needed'
})

const response = await client.chat.completions.create({
  model: 'qwen3-8b',
  messages: [{ role: 'user', content: 'Explain closures in one paragraph.' }]
})

console.log(response.choices[0].message.content)

pip install openai

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="http://localhost:1234/v1",
    api_key="not-needed",
)

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="qwen3-8b",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Explain closures in one paragraph."}],
)

print(response.choices[0].message.content)

curl http://localhost:1234/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "qwen3-8b",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Explain closures in one paragraph."}]
  }'

Worth knowing

Start the local server from the Developer tab before calling it.

Models you get for free3

Qwen 3qwen3
GPT-OSS 120Bgpt-oss-120b
Mixtral 8x7Bopen-mixtral-8x7b