Best ChatGPT Alternatives in 2026: Hosted Assistants and Private, Self-Hosted Options

Most ChatGPT alternatives fall into two groups. If you want another hosted assistant, Claude suits writing and document work, Google Gemini suits people who live in Google's tools, and Perplexity suits research where you want cited sources. If you want privacy and control, Jan and Open WebUI let you chat with models that run on your own hardware or through your own API keys.

Models and plans change too fast for a "smartest" ranking to stay true, so this guide describes what each product is and who it suits. Picks 1 to 6 are hosted services. Picks 7 to 11 can be self-hosted or run locally, and the table shows which is which.

Why people look for ChatGPT alternatives

ChatGPT is a capable, widely used assistant. People still look around for these reasons.

• Hosted and proprietary only. Enlisted lists ChatGPT as a closed-source service with a free tier and paid plans, and it has no self-hosted version. Your prompts are processed on OpenAI's servers.
• A different strength. Some assistants lean on one job: Perplexity on cited answers, Microsoft Copilot on Office integration, Grok on live web and X posts, Gemini on Google's tools.
• Cost and limits. Free tiers have limits and the better-known assistants sell paid subscription plans, so heavy users and teams compare plans across vendors.
• Data control. Teams that must keep prompts and documents in-house look at self-hosted interfaces and local models instead.
• Model choice. A single vendor ties you to its models. Multi-model apps let you switch when a different model suits the task better.

How we picked

Every product here does the same core job as ChatGPT: chat with an AI model to write, answer questions, analyze and code. Open-source tools needed an active GitHub repository, and each pick says whether it can be self-hosted and which licence Enlisted lists. Model-quality rankings are left out on purpose, since they shift with every release. The method is explained under how Enlisted ranks tools.

1. Claude: best hosted alternative for writing, analysis and document work

Claude is Anthropic's AI assistant, offered as a hosted service on the web and in mobile apps, for drafting and editing text, analyzing information, writing and reviewing code and working through documents. The same family of models is also available to developers through Anthropic's API and partner cloud platforms.

Enlisted lists it as freemium, so there is a free way to try it alongside paid plans. For general-purpose chat it covers much the same ground as ChatGPT, which makes it the easiest like-for-like switch.

• Best for: people who mainly write, edit or work through long documents and want a direct ChatGPT substitute.
• Watch out for: it is closed source and hosted only, so it does not solve data-control concerns. Check current plan limits on the vendor's site.

2. Google Gemini: best for Google users and multi-step research

Google Gemini is Google's generative AI assistant, available as a mobile app, on the web and as a desktop app, for chat, writing, coding, research and generating images, video and music. Google's overview highlights Gemini Live for voice conversations, Deep Research for multi-step reports and Canvas for drafting documents and code.

It is the natural pick if your work already runs through Google's products. Enlisted lists it as freemium.

• Best for: people who want a ChatGPT alternative with built-in research and media generation from a large vendor.
• Watch out for: closed and hosted only. Check Google's overview for the features available on your plan.

3. Perplexity: best for research with cited answers

Perplexity is an AI answer engine that reads sources from the web and writes a summarized answer with citations, so you can check where information came from. Instead of a list of links or an open-ended chat, you ask a question and get an answer with its sources.

That makes it a different tool from ChatGPT rather than a copy of it. It is a good fit when the job is fact-finding, and follow-up questions keep the context.

• Best for: research, fact-checking and quick answers where you want to see the sources.
• Watch out for: it is built around search-style answers, and it is a hosted, closed service with no self-hosted version. Confirm current plans on the vendor's site.

4. Microsoft Copilot: best for Microsoft 365 and Office users

Microsoft Copilot is Microsoft's AI chat assistant with web search, image creation and integration with Office and other Microsoft products. You can use it for brainstorming, writing and planning, and for everyday questions answered with web results.

Enlisted lists it as freemium. If your documents, email and meetings already live in Microsoft's products, it is the most connected option.

• Best for: people and teams who work in Office and want an assistant close to their documents.
• Watch out for: a commercial, cloud-hosted product with no self-hosted version, and its Office integration is the main draw, which matters less if you do not use Microsoft products.

5. Grok: best for live web and X-aware answers

Grok is xAI's chat assistant, available at grok.com and integrated with the X platform, that can search the live web and posts on X to answer questions with current information. It also generates images and offers reasoning modes.

It suits people who want an assistant that is aware of current events and social conversation. The vendor changes model names and plans often, so check its site for the current offering.

• Best for: following current events and getting answers that draw on live data.
• Watch out for: closed and hosted only, and closely tied to the X platform.

6. Poe: best for trying many models in one app

Poe is a chat app, operated by Quora, that gives access to many AI models from one interface and lets you build custom bots. Instead of signing up with each provider, you switch between models inside the same app.

It is useful for comparing how different models answer the same question, and for packaging a prompt or behavior into a reusable bot. Enlisted lists it as freemium.

• Best for: people who want to compare several models without managing separate accounts.
• Watch out for: a hosted service with no self-hosted version, so your prompts pass through its platform.

7. Open WebUI: best self-hosted ChatGPT-style interface for teams

Open WebUI is a self-hosted web interface for working with large language models that connects to Ollama for local models and to any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. One deployment can front several backends side by side, and it is designed to keep working fully offline when you use only local models.

It adds role-based access control with user groups, retrieval-augmented generation over your documents, custom models that bundle instructions and tools into agents, and MCP and OpenAPI tool support. You can install it with Docker or pip, according to its documentation. Enlisted lists its licence as Other, so read the licence terms if you plan commercial or branded use.

• Best for: teams and households that want their own ChatGPT-style interface for local and cloud models.
• Watch out for: it is an interface, not a model. You need Ollama or an API behind it, and connecting a cloud API sends prompts to that provider.

8. LibreChat: best open-source ChatGPT clone for multiple providers

LibreChat is a self-hostable, open-source chat interface modeled on ChatGPT that connects to many providers, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Azure, AWS, Google and DeepSeek, and lets you switch models within a conversation. It is released under the MIT licence.

Its feature set includes agents, MCP and skills, artifacts, a code interpreter, message search and secure multi-user authentication. A free demo at chat.librechat.ai lets you try it before installing, per its official site.

• Best for: people who want the familiar ChatGPT layout while choosing and mixing providers.
• Watch out for: like Open WebUI it is a front end, so you supply the models, and you run and maintain the server.

9. Ollama: best way to run open models on your own machine

Ollama is a tool for downloading and running open large language models locally through a command line and a REST API, with an official Docker image and macOS, Windows and Linux installs. It is written in Go, released under MIT and built on the llama.cpp project.

It is the usual engine behind local setups: Open WebUI, LibreChat and many other interfaces work with it. Its site also offers running models in its cloud, and Enlisted lists paid plans alongside a free one.

• Best for: developers and tinkerers who want local models behind an API.
• Watch out for: it starts at the command line, and speed and quality depend on your hardware and the model you choose.

10. Jan: best desktop app for private, offline chat

Jan is an open-source desktop app that acts as a ChatGPT alternative you control: it downloads and runs language models from Hugging Face on your own computer, so chats stay private and work without an internet connection. When local hardware is not enough, it can connect to cloud models from providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral and Groq from the same interface.

It also supports custom assistants, Model Context Protocol integration, and a built-in local server with an OpenAI-compatible API, so other apps can use your local models. Installers cover Windows, macOS and Linux, and the project's site describes it as free and open source.

• Best for: individuals who want a private, offline ChatGPT-style app without running a server.
• Watch out for: local models are limited by your computer, and Enlisted lists its licence as Other.

11. AnythingLLM: best for chatting with your own documents privately

AnythingLLM is an all-in-one AI application for chatting with your own documents and running AI agents, which runs locally by default and connects to local or cloud language models. It is released under the MIT licence.

Vector databases, document processing, multi-user support and agents come included, and there are desktop apps for Mac, Windows and Linux plus a Docker version for teams. Enlisted lists a free self-hosted option alongside paid cloud plans.

• Best for: private question answering over PDFs, notes and internal documents.
• Watch out for: multi-user access control is listed for the Docker version, so the desktop app is better suited to one person than to a team.

More options for bringing your own model

Several other open-source projects fill gaps in this list.

• Desktop clients for your own API keys: Chatbox, Cherry Studio and NextChat each connect to multiple providers, and Chatbox and Cherry Studio also work with local models through Ollama.
• Local engines: LocalAI runs language, vision, voice and image models on your own hardware behind OpenAI-compatible APIs, with no GPU required, and llamafile packages a model and runtime into a single executable.
• Team knowledge: Onyx is an open-source AI platform that searches and chats over company knowledge from many connected apps.
• Hosted chat for developers: DeepSeek offers a chat assistant and an API, and releases some of its models openly.

Alternatives to Claude, Grok, Gemini, Perplexity and DeepSeek

Searches for alternatives to these assistants have the same answers as this guide, because they are all in the same two groups. If you leave one hosted assistant, the others here are the direct swaps, and Enlisted has separate pages for Claude alternatives, Grok alternatives, Google Gemini alternatives, Perplexity alternatives and DeepSeek alternatives. The full list for the original is at ChatGPT alternatives.

To stop depending on any single assistant, use a front end that connects to several providers. LibreChat, Open WebUI, Jan and Poe all let you change models without changing apps.

Which ChatGPT alternative should you choose?

Browse more in the AI tools category. If your main need is writing code with AI, see our guide to Cursor and GitHub Copilot alternatives.

How to run a ChatGPT alternative privately

A private setup has two parts: a model and an interface. Some tools bundle both, and others cover one half.

• Model runner: Ollama, LocalAI and llamafile run models on your own hardware. Jan and AnythingLLM can do this themselves.
• Interface: Open WebUI and LibreChat give you a browser-based chat on top of a runner or an API.
• Hardware: local models are only as fast and capable as the machine they run on, and larger models need more memory. LocalAI states that a GPU is not required, but expect smaller models on CPU-only machines.
• Where prompts go: with only local models, your prompts stay on your machine. If you connect a cloud API to a self-hosted interface, those prompts still go to that provider, so the interface alone does not make a setup private.

Start with Jan on a laptop to see how local models feel. Move to Open WebUI or LibreChat when you want to share a setup with other people.