SumizAI vs Backyard AI

What Backyard AI is

What Backyard AI is

Backyard AI (formerly Faraday.dev) is a desktop app for running open-source language models locally on your own computer, including popular models like LLaMA, Mistral, and Gemma. The rename from Faraday.dev to Backyard AI happened because the old name sounded like a developer tool and caused confusion with other companies — the new name better captures the idea of an accessible, private platform running "in your own backyard."

Key features

Users can create custom AI characters by defining a name, persona, traits, likes, dislikes, scenarios, and example dialogues. Tools like Lorebooks, Author's Note, and configurable grammars let you precisely shape a model's response style and enforce a consistent story tone. Backyard AI offers character chat in both text and voice, with full control over model parameters.

Who it's for

Backyard AI appeals to people interested in talking with custom AI characters and interactive creative writing, who want the privacy of running a model locally instead of sending every message to a cloud API.

Use cases

In practice, Backyard AI works well for building custom characters for long, multi-threaded interactive stories, testing different open-source models locally with no per-token fees, and voice conversations with characters for anyone who prefers interaction beyond plain text.

Pricing and business model

The desktop app is 100% free, and the web version offers 50 free messages a day, with Standard ($12) and Pro ($35) premium plans adding extra features and limits.

Limitations and what to watch for

Conversation quality with local models depends on your own computer's power, as with other on-device model-running tools. The rename from Faraday.dev to Backyard AI can confuse anyone searching for older material or tutorials under the previous name.

AI notes from character conversations

Backyard AI offers no separate lasting notes system beyond the conversation history with a given character — a fragment of dialogue you want to keep as an ai notes entry, say an interesting plot idea the model generated, has to be copied by hand into a separate notes app.

Local execution as the foundation of privacy

The Backyard AI desktop app runs the model directly on the user's computer, meaning content from character conversations — often personal or creative — never has to leave the device, unlike cloud-based chat platforms.

What's worth checking before choosing

Before installing, check whether your computer can handle your chosen model locally within a reasonable response time, and whether the web version's 50-message daily limit is enough if you'd rather not install the desktop app.

Bottom line

Backyard AI is a free app for local conversations with custom AI characters, with an emphasis on privacy and creative writing, at the cost of no organized notes archive. Anyone who wants ai notes from interesting conversation fragments to land automatically in a searchable archive needs a separate notes tool.

Comparison with SumizAI

Backyard AI and SumizAI differ in purpose. Backyard AI is local chat with custom characters for creative writing, with no lasting notes system. SumizAI is a notebook where a conversation with an AI model — including a local Ollama, one of seven supported providers, for similar privacy — automatically turns into ai notes saved as Markdown files in the user's vault. Anyone who wants private conversations with creative AI characters will pick Backyard AI; anyone who wants these notes from AI conversations to build a lasting, searchable archive will find SumizAI the better-fitting tool.

What SumizAI is

A note-taking application built around a conversation with an AI model. You ask a question, the answer streams back, and the answers worth keeping become Markdown notes — filed into a vault that is a folder on your own disk.

A vault is a directory holding base.md, a generated table of contents up to six levels deep, and a notes/ folder with one .md file per note. Before a note is written it is checked against the ones already there, so the fourth note about the same idea gets merged instead of added. Links between notes are ordinary Markdown links to files that exist.

The model is never ours: you bring your own API key to one of seven providers — Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, Groq, OpenRouter, a local Ollama or your own server — and pay that provider directly. A question sends the table of contents plus at most five relevant notes within a 24,000-character budget, and the app shows you which five it used.

Every answer kept this way becomes one of these ai notes, ready to search again months later without hunting back through old chats.

Side by side

Where they differ

• Backyard AI is a place to have the conversation. SumizAI is not a chatbot — the conversation is the input, not the product. What comes out of it is a .md file with a title, a place in base.md and a duplicate check against the notes already in the vault. If you only want to talk to a model, you do not need SumizAI.
• AlternativeTo's description of Backyard AI does not mention an AI model. That is the whole starting point in SumizAI: you have a conversation with a model on your own API key, and the answers worth keeping become notes without you filing them.
• Backyard AI is free and SumizAI costs a dollar a month after a seven-day trial that takes no card. A dollar is what it costs to run accounts and licences without reselling the model; if free is the requirement, Backyard AI wins that row outright.
• AlternativeTo's description of Backyard AI does not mention Markdown, so check what format your notes end up in before you fill it up. SumizAI writes standard .md files to a folder you picked, and an unpaid account can still export all of them.
• Backyard AI runs in the browser. SumizAI is a desktop and mobile application, and on the desktop the vault is a folder on your own disk rather than a document in someone's cloud.

Which one to pick