# Jan vs MLX LM (slim)

> MLX LM and Jan score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 52.2 (D) and 51.3 (D). Jan leads on schema & documentation and security & auth. Both do local inference. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-mlx-lm.md (~2,300 tokens) · this version ~530 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-mlx-lm.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-mlx-lm
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-09

MLX LM and Jan score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 52.2 (D) and 51.3 (D). Jan leads on schema & documentation and security & auth. Both do local inference.

- Jan: D 51.3, rank #672 of 842 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/jan.min.md
- MLX LM: D 52.2, rank #657 of 842 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/mlx-lm.min.md
- Jan, 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 Schema & documentation, 56 against 37; Security & auth, 43 against 32.
- MLX LM, good for An owner with an Apple silicon Mac who wants MLX-format models, local fine-tuning and quantisation from Python or the command line, with a simple local chat completions server. Ahead on Agent ergonomics, 54 against 46; Maintenance & community, 61 against 47. Also No key needed to call it; No incidents deducted, where Jan loses 4 points for them.

| Category | Jan | MLX LM |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 68 | 66 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 56 | 37 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 46 | 54 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 43 | 32 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 60 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 47 | 61 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 68 | 66 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Jan | MLX LM |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model platform | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Menlo Research | Apple Inc. |
| Auth | API key | None |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Last release | 2026-07-23 | 2026-10-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-01-16 | no document linked |
| Popularity | 45k stars | 7.3k stars, 140k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2/5 (2) | none |