SHSelfHostIndex

LocalGPT vs PrivateGPT

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted self-hosted ai options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
LO LocalGPT Chat with your documents fully offline VS PR PrivateGPT Ask questions about your documents fully offline
FeatureLocalGPTPrivateGPT
Deploy effortUnder-an-hour setupUnder-an-hour setup
Health score95 · Excellent100 · Excellent
CategorySelf-Hosted AISelf-Hosted AI
LicenseApache-2.0Apache-2.0
LanguagePythonPython
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM8,192 MB8,192 MB
Deploymentsource, dockerdocker, bare-metal, source
GitHub stars★ 22,198★ 57,526
First released20232023
ReplacesChatGPTChatGPT

What are LocalGPT and PrivateGPT?

LocalGPT

LocalGPT lets you ask questions about your own documents using local language models, with no data leaving your machine. It builds a private retrieval-augmented chat over PDFs and text files.

  • Fully offline document chat
  • Local embedding models
  • Supports many file types
  • No data collection

Read the full LocalGPT guide →

PrivateGPT

PrivateGPT is a production-ready AI project that lets you ask questions about documents using LLMs entirely offline. It provides an API following the OpenAI standard and a Gradio UI for local RAG.

  • Fully offline RAG
  • OpenAI-compatible API
  • Document ingestion
  • No data leaves the host

Read the full PrivateGPT guide →

LocalGPT vs PrivateGPT: key differences

Both projects are written in Python. PrivateGPT has the considerably larger community, at 57,526 GitHub stars versus 22,198.

Why pick each one

Choose LocalGPT if…

  • Fully offline document chat
  • No data leaves machine
  • Multiple model backends

Watch out for

  • Strong hardware needed
  • Single-user focus
LocalGPT details

Choose PrivateGPT if…

  • Fully offline capable
  • OpenAI-compatible API
  • Privacy-focused design

Watch out for

  • GPU recommended
  • Setup can be fiddly
PrivateGPT details

Frequently asked questions

Is LocalGPT or PrivateGPT better?

Neither is universally better. PrivateGPT has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are LocalGPT and PrivateGPT free and open-source?

Yes. LocalGPT is licensed under Apache-2.0 and PrivateGPT under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run LocalGPT and PrivateGPT with Docker?

LocalGPT: yes. PrivateGPT: yes.

Related comparisons