The best offline AI chat apps for iPhone in 2026
Six iPhone apps that run a real LLM on-device with no internet — Enclave, Locally AI, Private LLM, PocketPal, Apollo and Pocket AI — compared on price, app size, iOS requirement and what they actually do offline.
Every "best local AI app" list I can find is a rewritten App Store page. Nobody checks the iOS requirement, nobody notices that one of these apps is a 1.3 GB download, and nobody tells you the one thing that decides which apps will even work: how much RAM your iPhone has.
So here is the list, with the boring parts checked.
Disclosure first, because it matters for the rest of this page: I make one of these apps, Pocket AI. I have put it last, I have listed the things it does worse, and every figure below comes from the public App Store record rather than from me. Check any of them yourself with https://itunes.apple.com/lookup?id=<the app id>.
All figures were read from the US App Store on 10 September 2026. Prices, sizes and minimum-iOS numbers move, so treat them as a snapshot.
The comparison
| App | Up-front price | App download | Needs iOS | Where models come from | Cloud option |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Enclave — Local AI Assistant | Free | 749 MB | 26.0 | Built-in picker | Yes, paid |
| Locally AI by LM Studio | Free | 109 MB | 18.1 | Built-in picker (Apple MLX) | No |
| Private LLM — Local AI Chat | $4.99 | 1.36 GB | 17.0 | Built-in picker (OmniQuant) | No |
| PocketPal AI | Free | 83 MB | 15.1 | Any GGUF on Hugging Face | No |
| Liquid Apollo | Free | 157 MB | 18.0 | Built-in picker (LEAP) | Yes, your own key |
| Pocket AI — No Internet | Free | 21 MB | 17.0 | Built-in picker (llama.cpp) | No |
Two columns in that table are worth more than the rest.
"Needs iOS" is a hard wall. Enclave requires iOS 26. It is an excellent app, but if your iPhone cannot run iOS 26, it is not on your list at all — and the App Store will not warn you until you try. PocketPal goes all the way back to iOS 15.1, which is the widest reach here by a distance.
"App download" is not the real download. Every app in this table downloads its language models separately, and those are 0.5–5 GB each. A 21 MB app and a 1.36 GB app both end up using several GB once you have picked a model. The app size only tells you how much is bundled up front.
Left out on purpose: star ratings
You will notice there is no ratings column. That is not an accident, and here is the honest reason: Pocket AI has four ratings. Enclave has over a thousand. A star average built from four people is noise, and putting it next to a number built from a thousand would be misleading in both directions — it makes the older apps look proven and the new one look bad, when really it just measures how long each app has been on sale.
If ratings matter to you, and they reasonably might, look them up. I am not going to build a table that flatters me.
The number that actually decides this
Before you pick an app, find out how much RAM your iPhone has. It sets a hard ceiling on which models you can run, and no app can raise it.
| Your iPhone | RAM | Biggest model that fits |
|---|---|---|
| 12, 12 mini, 13, 13 mini | 4 GB | ~1.3 GB |
| 12–14 Pro, 14, 15 | 6 GB | ~2.2 GB |
| 15 Pro, 16, 16e, 17 | 8 GB | ~3.2 GB |
| 17 Pro, 17 Pro Max, Air | 12 GB | ~5.1 GB |
If you go over that ceiling, iOS does not show you an error. It restarts your phone. We did exactly that to an iPhone 14 Pro during development, and the full write-up is in How much RAM does an LLM really need on an iPhone? — it is the most useful thing on this site.
App by app
Enclave — Local AI Assistant
Free · 749 MB · iOS 26+ · iPhone, iPad, Mac
The most complete app in this group. Local chat, on-device voice using Apple's speech stack, attachments (PDFs, images, source code), custom assistants, and Siri and Shortcuts support. A paid Pro tier adds cloud models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and xAI, plus web search, so it works as one app for both offline and frontier models.
The catch is iOS 26. That requirement is very new, and it rules out a large share of iPhones still in daily use.
Locally AI by LM Studio
Free · 109 MB · iOS 18.1+ · iPhone, iPad, Mac
The only app here built on Apple MLX rather than llama.cpp, which means it uses Apple's own machine-learning framework for Apple silicon. No login, no account, no data collection, and it also handles image analysis. It carries the LM Studio name, which is the best-known desktop local-LLM tool there is.
Simple and focused. If you want a clean offline chat app and nothing else, this is the easiest one to recommend.
Private LLM — Local AI Chat
$4.99 one-time · 1.36 GB · iOS 17+ · iPhone, iPad, Mac
The only paid-up-front app in the list, and the only one with no subscription at all — you buy it once and Family Sharing is included. It uses OmniQuant quantization rather than the standard GGUF Q4 that most of these apps ship, which is a genuinely different technical bet about squeezing models down. It has deep Siri and Shortcuts support.
If you hate subscriptions, this is your app. If you want to try before you pay, you cannot.
PocketPal AI
Free · 83 MB · iOS 15.1+ · iPhone, iPad
The tinkerer's choice, and open source — MIT licensed, 8,200 stars on GitHub. It is the only app here that lets you search Hugging Face from inside the app and download any GGUF you like, instead of choosing from a list someone else curated. It also has the lowest iOS requirement in the group by a wide margin.
The trade-off is that nothing stops you from downloading a model your phone cannot hold. Freedom includes the freedom to crash.
Liquid Apollo
Free · 157 MB · iOS 18+ · iPhone, iPad, Mac
Really a universal chat client that also does local models. It runs small models on-device through Liquid AI's LEAP runtime, but its main strength is connecting outward: bring an OpenRouter key and reach almost any model on the web, or point it at LM Studio or Ollama running on your own computer.
Pick this if you already run an LLM on a machine at home and want a phone client for it.
Pocket AI — No Internet
Free, one-time Pro unlock · 21 MB · iOS 17+ · iPhone, iPad
My app, so read this with that in mind.
It is the smallest download here at 21 MB, it runs 34 open models through llama.cpp with Metal acceleration, and it checks your device's real RAM before it lets you install a model — the download is blocked rather than allowed to restart your phone. That memory gate is the part I would defend hardest, and it exists because we crashed our own test device first. The full model list, with the RAM each one needs, is in Which AI models actually run on your iPhone.
Pro adds on-device voice input using a local Whisper model, and a Daily Brief that turns Calendar events and Reminders you pick into a morning plan on-device.
What it does worse: it is the newest app here and has the fewest ratings by far. It has no Mac version. It has no Siri or Shortcuts support yet. If you want document attachments today, Enclave does that and this does not.
Two apps people search for that are not on the App Store
LLMFarm is a real and well-liked project — MIT licensed, 2,000 stars on GitHub — but it is not a normal App Store listing. You install it through TestFlight or build it yourself.
MLC Chat is on the App Store, from the MLC team, and is best understood as a demonstration of the MLC runtime rather than a daily-driver chat app.
So which one
- **You want one app for offline and GPT-5-class models, and you are on iOS 26** → Enclave.
- You want the simplest good offline chat app → Locally AI.
- You refuse to pay a subscription ever → Private LLM.
- You want to download any model from Hugging Face yourself → PocketPal AI.
- You already run Ollama or LM Studio at home → Apollo.
- You have an older iPhone and want the app to stop you breaking it → Pocket AI.
They are all free to try except Private LLM. Installing three of them costs you nothing but storage, and the model you download works in whichever one you keep.
Read next
- How much RAM does an LLM really need on an iPhone? — the memory maths, and the phone we restarted.
- Which AI models actually run on your iPhone — 34 models with real download sizes and RAM requirements.
- What Q4_K_M actually means — why every app in this list ships 4-bit models.
- MiniCPM5-2B: a 2.5B model that actually beats its size class — a good first model to try in whichever app you pick.