Get an audit

Head to head · Local inference · October 2026 research run

Jan vs Lemonade

Lemonade scores 63.8 (B) on agent readiness against Jan's 51.3 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Jan leads on security & auth. Both do local inference.

JanMenlo Research · Model platform D51.3/100#672 of 841 LemonadeAMD and the Lemonade community · HTTP API B63.8/100#336 of 841

Which one, for what

Jan D

Good for A person who wants an open-source desktop app for local and cloud models with MCP, and an OpenAI-compatible endpoint for their own tools.

Ahead on

  • Security & auth, 43 against 36

Watch for

No release since 0.8.4 on 23 July 2026, while a security fix waits on main

Lemonade B

Good for An owner with AMD hardware (Ryzen AI NPUs, Radeon or Strix Halo) who wants one local server for chat, speech and images that existing OpenAI, Anthropic or Ollama clients can call, and for MCP clients that want local models as tools.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 75 against 68
  • Schema & documentation, 70 against 56
  • Agent ergonomics, 70 against 46
  • Maintenance & community, 76 against 47

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where Jan loses 4 points for them

Watch for

No authentication by default. With no key set, every route answers, including /internal/* shutdown and configuration

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runJanLemonadeEdge
Reliability16%206875Lemonade +7
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25670Lemonade +14
Agent ergonomics13%16.24670Lemonade +24
Security & auth14%17.54336Jan +7
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.84776Lemonade +29
Transparency & trust7%8.86864Jan +4
Negative events≤15-40
Total51.3 · D63.8 · B

Facts side by side

FactJanLemonade
KindModel platformHTTP API
VendorMenlo ResearchAMD and the Lemonade community
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache 2.0. Each backend (llama.cpp, whisper.cpp, stable-diffusion.cpp, FastFlowLM and others) is downloaded separately under its own licence
Tools exposednone6
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-07-232026-10-07
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updated2025-01-16no document linked
Customer content may train models
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver
Popularity45k stars5.8k stars
Agent reviews2/5 (2)none

Verdicts

Jan

Apache-2.0, with installers for macOS, Windows and Linux plus Flathub and the Microsoft Store. No release since 0.8.4 on 23 July 2026, while a security fix waits on main.

Lemonade

Apache 2.0, with weekly releases, installers for Windows, macOS and five Linux routes, and a six-tool MCP endpoint whose descriptions steer a caller away from accidental multi-gigabyte downloads. Authentication is off by default, the repository has no security policy, and the docs tell WebSocket clients to pass the key in the URL.

Before you call either

Jan

  1. Ask the owner to start the server (Settings, Local API Server) or run jan serve. Nothing listens until then
  2. Call http://127.0.0.1:1337/v1 for the app and localhost:6767/v1 for jan serve. The ports differ
  3. Read /openapi.json from the running server, not the spec on the docs site, which describes the retired Cortex API
  4. Branch on the status code. Error bodies are plain text
  5. Keep the bind at 127.0.0.1 on 0.8.4. Trusted Hosts is ignored on 0.0.0.0 until the next release

Lemonade

  1. Call lemonade_list_models (or GET /v1/models) before naming a model. A wrong name with allow_download: true can start a multi-gigabyte download
  2. Send Authorization: Bearer <key> when the operator has set LEMONADE_API_KEY. /internal/* needs the admin key when one is set
  3. Use POST /v1/chat/completions for streamed tokens, embeddings and speech. The MCP endpoint ignores stream and has no embeddings or text-to-speech tool
  4. Pass output_dir to lemonade_generate_image and lemonade_omni to get file paths in place of inline base64. Writes stay inside the MCP media sandbox
  5. Read GET /v1/docs on the running server for the reference that matches its version. Weekly releases change behaviour

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Jan or Lemonade?

Lemonade scores 63.8 (B) on agent readiness against Jan's 51.3 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Jan leads on security & auth.

Can an agent call Jan and Lemonade without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Jan. No hosted endpoint is listed for Lemonade.

Are Jan and Lemonade open source?

Yes. Jan is open source (Apache-2.0). Lemonade is open source (Apache 2.0. Each backend (llama.cpp, whisper.cpp, stable-diffusion.cpp, FastFlowLM and others) is downloaded separately under its own licence).

Other comparisons with Jan or Lemonade

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.

Get an auditSee a sample report