Skip to content

GUI Tools

Visual interfaces for interacting with local LLMs.

Overview

GUI tools provide:

  • User-friendly interface - Chat without command line
  • Model management - Download, switch, configure models
  • Conversation history - Persistent chat sessions
  • Multi-backend - Connect to various inference engines

Tool Comparison

Feature LM Studio Jan.ai Open WebUI ComfyUI
Platform macOS, Windows, Linux macOS, Windows, Linux Web (any) Web (any)
Primary use LLM chat LLM chat LLM chat Image/video/audio/3D generation
Model source HuggingFace HuggingFace Any OpenAI-compatible HuggingFace, Civitai
Local server Yes Yes Connects to backends Yes (built-in)
Offline Yes Yes Backend dependent Yes
Multi-user No No Yes No
RAG No Extensions Built-in N/A
Open source No Yes Yes Yes (GPL-3.0)
Privacy Good Excellent Depends on setup Excellent

Feature Matrix

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    Desktop Applications                          │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                                                                  │
│  ┌─────────────────────┐    ┌─────────────────────┐             │
│  │      LM Studio      │    │       Jan.ai        │             │
│  ├─────────────────────┤    ├─────────────────────┤             │
│  │ [x] Model discovery   │    │ [x] 100% offline      │             │
│  │ [x] Built-in chat     │    │ [x] No telemetry      │             │
│  │ [x] OpenAI API server │    │ [x] Extensions        │             │
│  │ [x] Good for testing  │    │ [x] Privacy-first     │             │
│  └─────────────────────┘    └─────────────────────┘             │
│                                                                  │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    Web-Based Interfaces                          │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                                                                  │
│  ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐    │
│  │                      Open WebUI                          │    │
│  ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤    │
│  │ [x] Connects to Ollama, OpenAI, any compatible API        │    │
│  │ [x] Multi-user with authentication                        │    │
│  │ [x] RAG (document upload and search)                      │    │
│  │ [x] Model switching                                       │    │
│  │ [x] Chat history                                          │    │
│  │ [x] Self-hosted                                           │    │
│  └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘    │
│                                                                  │
│  ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐    │
│  │                       ComfyUI                            │    │
│  ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤    │
│  │ [x] Node-based workflow editor                            │    │
│  │ [x] Image, video, audio/music, 3D generation              │    │
│  │ [x] Native AMD ROCm support                               │    │
│  │ [x] Thousands of custom nodes                             │    │
│  │ [x] API-driven (every workflow is JSON)                   │    │
│  │ [x] Self-hosted, open source (GPL-3.0)                    │    │
│  └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘    │
│                                                                  │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Recommendation by Use Case

Use Case Recommended Tool
Quick model testing LM Studio
Privacy-focused use Jan.ai
Team/multi-user Open WebUI
Server deployment Open WebUI
Model discovery LM Studio
Offline work Jan.ai or LM Studio
Image generation ComfyUI
Video generation ComfyUI
Audio/music generation ComfyUI
3D model generation ComfyUI
Node-based workflows ComfyUI

Quick Start

LM Studio

  1. Download from lmstudio.ai
  2. Search and download a model
  3. Start chatting or enable API server

Jan.ai

  1. Download from jan.ai
  2. Download models from Hub
  3. Chat offline

Open WebUI

docker run -d \
  -p 3000:8080 \
  -v /mnt/tank/ai/data/open-webui:/app/backend/data \
  -e OLLAMA_BASE_URL=http://host.docker.internal:11434 \
  --name open-webui \
  ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:main

Topics

See Also