# Jan vs sidellama

Jan records 291,894 monthly visits with -9.6% month-over-month growth and Free pricing. sidellama records 0 monthly visits with — growth and Free pricing.

| Metric | [Jan](https://openaitools.app/tool/jan) | [sidellama](https://openaitools.app/tool/sidellama) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| Website URL | https://jan.ai | https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/sidellama/lcgkoaonfgonjamccahahodpkdkfhijo |
| Categories | AI Chatbot, AI Assistant, Open Source AI Models, Large Language Models (LLMs) | Large Language Models (LLMs), Open Source AI Models, AI Assistant, AI Chatbot |
| Pricing Model | Free | Free |
| Monthly Visits | 291,894 | 0 |
| MoM Growth Rate | -9.6% | — |
| Primary Market | United States | Global |
| Direct Visits | 105,615 | 0 |
| Review Score | 4.6 | 4.3 |
| Saved Count | 6 | 0 |
| Supported Platforms | Website | Browser Extension |

## 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)

## sidellama

sidellama is a small Chrome extension that turns your browser into a chat client for open-source language models. Rather than locking you into one provider, it connects to whatever model access you already have: a local Ollama server, a local LM Studio server, or open-source models hosted through Groq. The extension itself is lightweight (under a megabyte) and open source, with the code published on GitHub.

What makes it browser-augmented is page context. When you are reading an article or documentation, you can feed the visible text of that page into the conversation, or switch to HTML mode to share the page source — a developer-oriented option that is intentionally resource intensive and paired with a character limit so you do not blow past your context window. Web search augmentation adds live public data: type a query, choose DuckDuckGo or Brave as the source, and sidellama runs an asynchronous search to ground its answer.

A persona system lets you build and modify your own assistants. You can create, configure, and switch between different system prompts and custom instructions, so the same model can act as a coding helper, a summarizer, or a research companion depending on the persona you select. The listing shows version 0.0.1, last updated August 29, 2024, with a small but strongly positive rating base and no data collection declared by the developer.

**Pricing & Plans:** sidellama is free. There is no charge for the extension itself; you cover the cost of whichever model access you connect, such as your own local Ollama or LM Studio setup or a paid/limited Groq API tier.

- **Connect local or hosted open-source models:** Point sidellama at a local Ollama or LM Studio server, or use open-source models through Groq.
- **Page context augmentation:** Share the text of the page you are reading, or its HTML source in development mode, with a configurable character limit.
- **Custom personas:** Create and modify personal assistants with system prompts and custom instructions for different tasks.
- **Web search augmentation:** Run asynchronous searches through DuckDuckGo or Brave and answer questions using live public data.
- **Open-source codebase:** The extension is open source, with the code available in a public GitHub repository.

**Strengths:** Free and open source, with code on GitHub; Works with local Ollama and LM Studio servers for private use; Page context and web search grounding in one small extension; Custom personas via system prompts and custom instructions

**Limitations:** Last updated August 2024; feature set is intentionally minimal; Very small user base and only a couple of ratings; Web search augmentation is basic, not a full research pipeline; HTML mode is resource intensive and intended for development only

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

## Frequently Asked Questions

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

Jan has 291,894 monthly visits, while sidellama has 0. 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%; sidellama has —.

### 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. sidellama: Free. sidellama is free. There is no charge for the extension itself; you cover the cost of whichever model access you connect, such as your own local Ollama or LM Studio setup or a paid/limited Groq API tier.

## Alternatives

| # | Tool Name | Monthly Visits | MoM Growth Rate | Pricing Model | Summary | Profile (Markdown) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| 1 | [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) |
| 2 | [Ollama](https://openaitools.app/tool/ollama) | 9,421,973 | +4.3% | Free, Freemium, Paid | Run and build with open AI models locally or in the cloud | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/ollama.md) |
| 3 | [Poe](https://openaitools.app/tool/poe) | 5,894,702 | +9.1% | Freemium | One app to chat with GPT, Claude, Gemini and hundreds of other AI models | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/poe.md) |
| 4 | [Sider](https://openaitools.app/tool/sider-ai-extension) | 2,644,740 | -10.6% | Freemium | Your AI agent for the browser: chat, automate and create from one sidebar | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/sider-ai-extension.md) |
| 5 | [Merlin AI](https://openaitools.app/tool/merlin-ai) | 1,382,634 | +13.1% | Freemium | One-click AI assistant for browsing, writing and research | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/merlin-ai.md) |
| 6 | [Open WebUI](https://openaitools.app/tool/open-webui) | 804,534 | -2.8% | Freemium | Self-hosted AI workspace for local and cloud models | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/open-webui.md) |
| 7 | [HARPA AI](https://openaitools.app/tool/harpa-ai) | 537,461 | +99.3% | Freemium | One browser agent that combines every major AI model with web automation | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/harpa-ai.md) |
| 8 | [AnythingLLM](https://openaitools.app/tool/anythingllm) | 512,269 | +12.9% | Freemium | Specializes in document chat and local RAG workflows, though less focused on general-purpose model tinkering than Jan. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/anythingllm.md) |
| 9 | [LibreChat](https://openaitools.app/tool/librechat) | 346,879 | -3.5% | Free | Unites multiple AI providers in a customizable open-source platform, but is typically deployed as a web server. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/librechat.md) |
| 10 | [ChatHub](https://openaitools.app/tool/chathub) | 322,618 | -13.9% | Freemium | Compare GPT, Claude, and Gemini answers side by side in one chat | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/chathub.md) |

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

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