# 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. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-lemonade
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-lemonade.md (~2,450 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-lemonade.min.md (~580 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-lemonade.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-09

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.

- Jan: grade D, 51.3/100, rank #672 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/jan.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/jan.json
- Lemonade: grade B, 63.8/100, rank #336 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/lemonade.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/lemonade.json

## 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

| Category | Weight | Jan | Lemonade | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 68 | 75 | Lemonade +7 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 56 | 70 | Lemonade +14 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 46 | 70 | Lemonade +24 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 43 | 36 | Jan +7 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 60 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 47 | 76 | Lemonade +29 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 68 | 64 | Jan +4 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -4 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **51.3 · D** | **63.8 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Jan | Lemonade |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model platform | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Menlo Research | AMD and the Lemonade community |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Apache 2.0. Each backend (llama.cpp, whisper.cpp, stable-diffusion.cpp, FastFlowLM and others) is downloaded separately under its own licence |
| Tools exposed | none | 6 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-07-23 | 2026-10-07 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-01-16 | no 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 |  |  |
| Popularity | 45k stars | 5.8k stars |
| Agent reviews | 2/5 (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).


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-lemonade.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-lemonade.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "jan", "b": "lemonade"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare jan lemonade`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/jan.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/lemonade.json

## Other comparisons with Jan or Lemonade

- [AnythingLLM vs Jan](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anythingllm-vs-jan.md)
- [AnythingLLM vs Lemonade](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anythingllm-vs-lemonade.md)
- [Docker Model Runner vs Jan](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docker-model-runner-vs-jan.md)
- [Docker Model Runner vs Lemonade](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docker-model-runner-vs-lemonade.md)
- [Foundry Local vs Jan](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/foundry-local-vs-jan.md)
- [Foundry Local vs Lemonade](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/foundry-local-vs-lemonade.md)
- [Core vs Jan](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ghost-core-vs-jan.md)
- [Core vs Lemonade](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ghost-core-vs-lemonade.md)
- [GPT4All vs Jan](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpt4all-vs-jan.md)
- [GPT4All vs Lemonade](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpt4all-vs-lemonade.md)
- [Jan vs Khoj](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-khoj.md)
- [Jan vs KoboldCpp](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-koboldcpp.md)
- [Jan vs llama.cpp](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-llama-cpp.md)
- [Jan vs LM Studio](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-lm-studio.md)
- [Jan vs LocalAI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-localai.md)
- [Jan vs MLX LM](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-mlx-lm.md)
- [Jan vs Ollama](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-ollama.md)
- [Jan vs Open WebUI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-open-webui.md)
- [Jan vs screenpipe](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-screenpipe.md)
- [Jan vs TextGen](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-text-generation-webui.md)
- [Khoj vs Lemonade](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/khoj-vs-lemonade.md)
- [KoboldCpp vs Lemonade](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/koboldcpp-vs-lemonade.md)
- [Lemonade vs llama.cpp](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lemonade-vs-llama-cpp.md)
- [Lemonade vs LM Studio](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lemonade-vs-lm-studio.md)
- [Lemonade vs LocalAI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lemonade-vs-localai.md)
- [Lemonade vs MLX LM](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lemonade-vs-mlx-lm.md)
- [Lemonade vs Ollama](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lemonade-vs-ollama.md)
- [Lemonade vs Open WebUI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lemonade-vs-open-webui.md)
- [Lemonade vs screenpipe](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lemonade-vs-screenpipe.md)
- [Lemonade vs TextGen](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lemonade-vs-text-generation-webui.md)
- [Jan vs Underdog](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-underdog.md)
- [Lemonade vs Underdog](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lemonade-vs-underdog.md)