Ensu is a local LLM chat app from Ente, the company behind Ente Photos and Ente Auth. Models run entirely on your device with no server calls, so your prompts stay local. The app is open source and available for iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and Linux, with an optional end-to-end encrypted sync via your Ente account.
Reviewed by Marcus Holmberg
Ensu
ente.com/ensu 1 rating so far*
Rate Ensu: No account needed
Threat level
Hardened
A hardened pick. Worth the effort once you have chosen to shrink your footprint on purpose. Enough for most people. Threat levels
Our take
The honest case for Ensu is privacy you can actually verify: no prompt ever leaves your machine, and the open-source code is auditable. The catch is capability: on-device models are genuinely weaker than frontier cloud AI for complex tasks, so if you rely on ChatGPT for heavy reasoning or coding you will feel the gap. For sensitive journaling, offline drafting, or casual Q&A without trusting a cloud provider, Ensu is the cleaner choice.
GitHub at a glance
ente/ente
Stars
27,612
+ 580 this week
Last commit
8d ago
healthy
License
AGPL-3.0
Latest release
photos-v1.3.57
12d ago
Stars, last 31d
Website at a glance
ente.com
B+ score 80
Solid website security headers
Graded by Mozilla HTTP Observatory, tested today
Inspect this site yourself
Measures the security configuration of the tool's own website, not the privacy of the product itself. A strong tool can still score low here.
Ensu alternatives
Lumo Proton's hosted AI assistant with zero-access encryption of saved chats and a strict no-logs policy.
Duck.ai DuckDuckGo's private AI chat that lets you talk to multiple models with no account and no training on your prompts.
Euria Infomaniak's Swiss-hosted AI assistant that pledges no training on user data and operates under GDPR and Swiss data law.
Apple Intelligence Apple's AI. On-device where it can, with verifiable Private Cloud Compute for the rest.
Skales Skales is a local AI desktop agent that runs on your computer with any AI provider you choose. All conversations and data stay on your machine, and you control which model and which API keys you use.
Ollama Ollama lets you download and run large language models locally via a simple CLI and REST API. Supports a growing library of open models including Llama, Mistral, and Gemma on Windows, Mac, and Linux with no data sent to the cloud.
Ensu license, in plain English
AGPL-3.0 Strong copyleft · network
Free to use, even commercially. Changes must be published under the same license, and running a modified version as a network service counts as distributing it.
Permits
- Commercial use
- Modification
- Distribution
- Patent use
- Private use
Requires
- Disclose source
- Network use is distribution
- Same license
- State changes
- License and copyright notice
Does not provide
- Liability cover
- Warranty
Why it matters: The network clause is the point. Anyone who runs a modified version as a hosted service has to publish those changes, so the code handling your data stays inspectable. This is why privacy-first projects reach for AGPL.
Plain-language summary of the project's license, not legal advice. Read the full text for the exact terms.
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