Disclosure: we make Pinku, the app ranked first here. What we say about the other apps comes from their own App Store pages, checked on 7 October 2026.
ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini keep your conversations on their servers, under retention rules you did not write. We went through those rules in what ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini actually do with your conversations; the short version is that Google keeps human-reviewed Gemini chats for up to three years, even after you delete them. The apps below avoid the problem at the root. The model runs on your iPhone, so the conversation has nowhere to go.
The ranking
- Pinku: best overall, no cloud path at all.
- Locally AI by LM Studio: best free private chat.
- PocketPal AI: best if you want code anyone can audit.
- Private LLM: best pay-once private chat.
- Enclave: private locally, with an optional cloud tier.
- Privacy AI: local models plus agents, with more data collected.
Why Pinku is #1
- The conversation never leaves the device: the model runs on your iPhone, iPad or Mac, with no network call to answer.
- No account and no server. Its App Store privacy label reads Data Not Collected.
- No cloud mode at all, so there is no setting that can quietly send a chat to someone else's model.
- Free to start; Pinku Pro is a one-time $9.99 purchase, so no subscription account to keep.
- The interface in 8 languages: English, Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese and Russian.
- A memory check before loading keeps a model that is too big from crashing the app.
How we ranked them
Three questions, in order: does a normal conversation leave the device? What does the developer declare in the App Store privacy label? And is there an account or a cloud mode that could send a chat elsewhere?
| Privacy label | Cloud models | Source code | Price (US) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Pinku (ours) | Data Not Collected | None | Closed | Free; Pro $9.99 one-time |
| 2. Locally AI | Data Not Collected | Not mentioned | Closed | Free |
| 3. PocketPal AI | Data Not Collected | Not mentioned | Open (MIT) | Free |
| 4. Private LLM | Data Not Collected | Not mentioned | Closed | $4.99 upfront |
| 5. Enclave | Data Not Linked to You | Optional, with Pro | Closed | Free; Pro $9.99 |
| 6. Privacy AI | Data Used to Track You | Optional, by subscription | Closed | Free; $3.99/week to $99.99/year |
Privacy labels are what each developer declares on the App Store; Apple does not verify them. Enclave's label lists analytics, identifiers, diagnostics and other user content as data not linked to you. Privacy AI's lists identifiers and usage data that may be used to track you. “Not mentioned” means the App Store description does not mention cloud models. Checked on 7 October 2026.
1. Pinku
Pinku runs twelve curated open models on iPhone, iPad and Mac with Apple MLX. There is no account, no server and no cloud option, which is the point: nothing can be switched on later that sends a conversation out. The first model download is the only time it needs the internet, apart from App Store purchases. Pinku Pro adds custom instructions, written by you and kept on the device, and dictation recognised on the device, never sent to a server. Where others beat it: Pinku's code is not public, so you are trusting our label and our word, which PocketPal does not ask of you.
2. Locally AI by LM Studio
Free, no login, Apple MLX, image understanding, and a Data Not Collected label. From the team behind LM Studio, with the most ratings of any app here. If you want a free private chat and nothing else, it is hard to fault.
3. PocketPal AI
The only app here whose source code is public, under the MIT licence, so its privacy claims can be checked rather than taken on trust. Free, runs any GGUF model from Hugging Face. You choose models yourself, so mind your phone's memory.
4. Private LLM
$4.99 once, Data Not Collected, Siri and Shortcuts, models up to 14B parameters on a Mac. Paying upfront also means no in-app purchase or subscription account.
5. Enclave
Local chats stay local, and Enclave adds documents, voice and custom assistants. Two things put it lower here: its privacy label declares analytics and diagnostic data (not linked to you), and its Pro tier adds cloud models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and xAI. Chats you send to those leave the device, by design.
6. Privacy AI
Runs GGUF, MLX and Apple's own models locally, plus agents, more than 60 tools and MCP. Cloud models are optional by subscription. Its privacy label is the only one here that declares data used to track you (identifiers and usage data), so we rank it last for this question, even though local chats run on the device.
About “uncensored” AI
Many people looking for a private AI also search for an “uncensored” one. To be straight: none of these apps removes what a model learned in training. The open models in Pinku (Gemma, Llama, Qwen and others) answer the way their makers trained them, and some will still decline some requests. What a local app does change is who is watching. There is no server to log the prompt, no moderation queue and no reviewer, and with Pinku Pro the instructions that shape every answer are yours.
Check it yourself
- Read the privacy label on the App Store page, under App Privacy. Data Not Collected is the strongest declaration a developer can make.
- Turn on Airplane Mode after downloading a model. If the app still answers, the conversation is being processed on your phone.
- Look for a cloud switch. If the app offers cloud models, know which chats use them.