Lets do a comparision of PROs and CONs of using LM Studio vs GPT4All and the finally declare the best software among them to interact with AI locally offline. Using LM Studio or GPT4All, one can easily download open source large language models (LLM) and start a conversation with AI completely offline. But first, let’s talk about the installation process of GPT4ALL and LM Studio and then move on to the actual comparison. You can use the table of contents section below to move onto specific section to save your time.
Table of Contents
How to install 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.
We’re done with installing GPT4All. Now let’s move onto installing discuss the comparisons between LM Studio and GPT4All.
The first step is to go ahead and download the LM Studio software from its website and install it on your device.
Open the installed LM Studio software and you will see a search bar to discover and run Local LLMs.
If you knew the LLM model you want to install, then you can search for it here or you can click on the search icon in the left sidebar. In my case, I’ve searched for an LLM model called Mistral.
As the name suggests, these models are really large. Most of them are at least 3GB in size. So take caution If you are running out of hard drive space.
Next, click on the chat icon on the left navigation bar just below the search icon and load the model from the top bar.
You can also add system prompts and modify other settings in the right sidebar. And that’s it. We can now chat with an LLM completely offline on our own devices.
In case you want to try out a different LLM follow the same procedure. Since these LLMs are very large, I would suggest managing the installed models installed by clicking on the folder icon in the left navigation bar.
LM Studio vs GPT4All
After trying out both LM Studio and GPT4All, we’ve compiled a list of PROs and Cons related to LM Studio and GPT4All. Let’s check them out now.
PROs and Cons of 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 its clean UI, 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
No Support for integrating with models using OpenAI API keys.
PROs and Cons of 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.
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.
