We’ve discussed how to run ChatGPT like LLM using LM Studio in detail before. Using LM Studio one can easily download open source large language models (LLM) and start a conversation with AI completely offline. There are also a few other alternatives to LM Studio, like GPT4All, Ollama, etc.; So in this article, let’s compare the pros and cons of LM Studio and GPT4All and ultimately come to a conclusion on which of those is the best software to interact with LLMs locally. But first, let’s talk about the installation process of GPT4ALL and then move on to the actual comparison.

Installing GPT4All:

First, visit the Gpt4All website. Download the relevant software depending on your operating system. Then install the software on your device. Once it is installed, launch GPT4all and it will appear as shown in the below screenshot. From there you can click on the “Download Models” buttons to access the models list.

Choose one model from the list of LLMs shown. I’ve downloaded the Mistral instruct model, but in our case choose the one that suits your device best. To remove a downloaded model you need to visit this same listing screen.

Once a model is downloaded, the chat screen will be enabled for you to start chatting with an AI model.

You can start asking the AI model anything and it will reply to you with an answer.

You can also change the settings of the model by clicking on the settings icon on the top right. The settings screen will be as shown in the below screenshot.

Now that we’re done with installing GPT4All, let’s discuss the comparisons between LM Studio and GPT4All.

LM Studio vs GPT4All: Pros and Cons

LM Studio:

Pros:
From installation of the software to downloading models and, chatting with the LLMs, LM Studio offers a simple and intuitive UI.
It provides a clean and powerful UI and a great user experience.
Thanks to that, we can easily delete the downloaded models thereby saving disk space.
LM studio has the built-in functionality to serve model inferences through an API endpoint.
LM Studio also offers the ability to tweak the settings. Some advanced users will love this as there are a wide range of settings to tweak with.

Cons:
We didn’t find any.

GPT4All:

Pros:
Simple UI. Mostly targeted towards very basic end users.
Offers functionality to enable API server just like LM studio.
Can also integrate with ChatGPT models like GPT3.5 and GPT4 using OpenAI API keys.
Other than that we didn’t find any pros when compared to LM Studio.

Cons:
Installation is not as seamless as LM Studio on macOS.
Poor user experience. UI is not as intuitive as LM Studio.
Had to delete the models manually when compared to LM Studio.

Conclusion:

Both LM Studio and GPT4All are great software. However, when doing a comparison it’s our responsibility to list out the facts as we’ve experienced. So, from the above, it is very clear that LM Studio is the winner in terms of all aspects when compared to GPT4All.