# Jan vs Poe

Jan records 291,894 monthly visits with -9.6% month-over-month growth and Free pricing. Poe records 5,894,702 monthly visits with +9.1% growth and Freemium pricing.

| Metric | [Jan](https://openaitools.app/tool/jan) | [Poe](https://openaitools.app/tool/poe) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| Website URL | https://jan.ai | https://poe.com |
| Categories | AI Chatbot, AI Assistant, Open Source AI Models, Large Language Models (LLMs) | AI Chatbot, Large Language Models (LLMs), AI Assistant, AI Answer |
| Pricing Model | Free | Freemium |
| Monthly Visits | 291,894 | 5,894,702 |
| MoM Growth Rate | -9.6% | +9.1% |
| Primary Market | United States | Hong Kong SAR China |
| Direct Visits | 105,615 | 4,014,057 |
| Review Score | 4.6 | 4.7 |
| Saved Count | 6 | 77 |
| Supported Platforms | Website | Website |

## Jan

Jan is a desktop application that positions itself as an open replacement for ChatGPT, with the key difference that inference happens on hardware you control. After installing the app you pick a model, and Jan downloads and runs it locally, so prompts, chat history, and files stay on your machine rather than on someone else's server. For heavier workloads you can connect an OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, or Mistral key and route requests to the cloud while keeping the same chat interface and local history.

The project is developed in the open by Menlo Research and has accumulated tens of thousands of GitHub stars along with millions of downloads. It exposes OpenAI-compatible local endpoints, which means existing tooling and SDKs can point at Jan instead of a hosted service, and it supports custom assistants with their own instructions and model choices. Recent releases have added an agent surface alongside the classic desktop chat, and a memory feature is announced as coming to carry context and preferences between sessions.

Because it is open source, Jan can be audited, self-built, and extended, and there is no paid tier gating the desktop client. The practical tradeoff is that local model quality and speed depend entirely on your own GPU or CPU, so lighter machines will favor smaller quantized models while cloud keys remain the escape hatch for harder tasks.

**Pricing & Plans:** Jan is free and open source, with no paid tier for the desktop app. Costs only appear if you optionally connect your own paid cloud API keys for providers such as OpenAI or Anthropic.

- **Local-first inference:** Download and run open models such as Llama, Mistral, Qwen, Gemma, and DeepSeek directly on your own machine, with chat data kept on device.
- **Bring your own cloud models:** Optionally connect API keys for OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Mistral, and other providers to route requests to frontier models from the same interface.
- **OpenAI-compatible local API:** Jan exposes a local server endpoint that follows the OpenAI API shape, so existing SDKs and tools can talk to your local models without code changes.
- **Custom assistants:** Create assistants with their own system instructions, model selection, and parameters, then reuse them across conversations.
- **Open source and extensible:** The full desktop client and agent code are public on GitHub, so you can audit behavior, build your own version, and contribute improvements.

**Strengths:** Completely free and open source, with no account required to run local models; Conversation data stays on your device by default; Works across macOS, Windows, and Linux with an OpenAI-compatible local endpoint; Optional cloud key support lets you mix local and frontier models in one app

**Limitations:** Local model quality and speed are capped by your own hardware; Very large models may need substantial RAM or VRAM to be practical; Some cloud-connected and memory features are newer or still rolling out

[Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/jan.md)

## Poe

Poe is an AI chat platform created by Quora. Instead of subscribing to each frontier model separately, you get a single interface where you can switch between models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, xAI and others, plus image, video and audio generators. The home feed lets you explore and use bots created by other people, so you can try specialized assistants for writing, coding, research, translation, roleplay or image creation without setting anything up.

A key part of Poe is bot creation. Anyone can build a custom bot by writing a prompt, choosing a base model and optionally attaching knowledge files, then publish it for others — or keep it private. Conversations, bots and settings sync across web, iOS, Android, Windows, Mac and Linux clients, so Poe works as a general-purpose daily AI assistant rather than a single-purpose tool.

Pricing is freemium: a free tier gives limited daily message allowances across a subset of models, while a paid subscription unlocks higher limits, access to more capable premium models, larger uploads and bonus compute points. Because the model catalog and quota rules evolve quickly, check the official Poe site for current plans and usage limits.

**Pricing & Plans:** Freemium: a free tier offers limited daily usage across many models, while paid subscriptions raise message limits and unlock premium frontier models, bigger uploads and bonus compute points. Check the official site for current plans and limits.

- **Multi-model chat:** Talk to GPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok and many other text, image, video and audio models from a single chat window.
- **Custom bot builder:** Create your own bots with a prompt and a base model, then share them publicly or keep them private.
- **Explore community bots:** Browse thousands of bots made by other users for coding, writing, research, study, roleplay and more.
- **Cross-platform sync:** Your chats, bots and settings stay in sync across web, iOS, Android, Windows, Mac and Linux clients.
- **Multimodal generation:** Generate and analyze images, video and audio alongside text in the same conversation.

**Strengths:** Access to many leading models through one login and subscription; Powerful bot creation and sharing without coding; Syncs across web, mobile and desktop clients; Continuously adds newly released frontier models

**Limitations:** Free tier message limits can be reached quickly with heavy use; Premium models and higher quotas require a paid subscription; Feature and quota rules change frequently as models update

[Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/poe.md)

## Frequently Asked Questions

### How do Jan and Poe compare in monthly traffic?

Jan has 291,894 monthly visits, while Poe has 5,894,702. Traffic estimates describe audience size, not product quality.

### How do their growth rates compare?

Jan has a month-over-month growth rate of -9.6%; Poe has +9.1%.

### How does pricing compare?

Jan: Free. Jan is free and open source, with no paid tier for the desktop app. Costs only appear if you optionally connect your own paid cloud API keys for providers such as OpenAI or Anthropic. Poe: Freemium. Freemium: a free tier offers limited daily usage across many models, while paid subscriptions raise message limits and unlock premium frontier models, bigger uploads and bonus compute points. Check the official site for current plans and limits.

## Alternatives

| # | Tool Name | Monthly Visits | MoM Growth Rate | Pricing Model | Summary | Profile (Markdown) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| 1 | [ChatGPT](https://openaitools.app/tool/chatgpt-4) | 6,048,022,723 | +2.2% | Freemium | Provides superior reasoning, voice, and coding agents, but lacks Poe's flexibility to switch between multiple distinct third-party model providers. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/chatgpt-4.md) |
| 2 | [Google Gemini](https://openaitools.app/tool/gemini-gemini-advanced) | 2,637,398,242 | -0.1% | Freemium | Features a massive context window and Google Workspace integration, but lacks Poe's broad multi-model conversational flexibility. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/gemini-gemini-advanced.md) |
| 3 | [Claude](https://openaitools.app/tool/claude-2) | 1,253,439,413 | +23.8% | Freemium | Offers exceptional coding artifacts and long-form analysis, but lacks Poe's multi-model aggregator interface and diverse bot marketplace. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/claude-2.md) |
| 4 | [DeepSeek](https://openaitools.app/tool/deepseek) | 372,761,591 | +4.3% | Freemium | High-efficiency open-weight and hosted reasoning AI powered by DeepSeek-V4 and R1 at ultra-low token costs. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/deepseek.md) |
| 5 | [Perplexity](https://openaitools.app/tool/perplexity-ai) | 88,310,223 | -3.7% | Freemium | Real-time AI answer engine and research workspace combining live web citations with frontier reasoning models. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/perplexity-ai.md) |
| 6 | [Ollama](https://openaitools.app/tool/ollama) | 9,421,973 | +4.3% | Free, Freemium, Paid | Provides a lightweight command-line runtime for local LLMs, though it lacks Jan's built-in graphical user interface. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/ollama.md) |
| 7 | [Monica](https://openaitools.app/tool/monica-ai) | 4,512,775 | -11.3% | Freemium | All-in-one AI assistant across web, browser, desktop and mobile | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/monica-ai.md) |
| 8 | [Sider](https://openaitools.app/tool/sider-ai-extension) | 2,644,740 | -10.6% | Freemium | Integrates multi-model chat directly into your browser workflow, but lacks Poe's dedicated standalone aggregator web and mobile application. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/sider-ai-extension.md) |
| 9 | [Open WebUI](https://openaitools.app/tool/open-webui) | 804,534 | -2.8% | Freemium | Provides a self-hosted open-source interface for local models, but requires manual infrastructure setup compared to Poe's hosted service. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/open-webui.md) |
| 10 | [Chatbox](https://openaitools.app/tool/chatbox) | 567,170 | -16.1% | Freemium | Offers a clean cross-platform client with local file support, but lacks Poe's vast collection of community-created custom bots. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/chatbox.md) |

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Source: https://openaitools.app/compare/jan-vs-poe

More Markdown: [Categories](https://openaitools.app/categories.md) · [Traffic rankings](https://openaitools.app/rankings.md) · [llms.txt](https://openaitools.app/llms.txt)