What Maid (AI) is
What Maid is
Maid is a cross-platform Flutter app for talking to language models — locally through GGUF and llama.cpp, or remotely through Ollama, Mistral, Google Gemini, or OpenAI. One interface handles both models running on your own hardware and ones available through external providers' APIs, depending on what's needed at the moment.
Key features
The app supports SillyTavern-format character cards, letting you talk to favorite, pre-configured personas instead of starting every session from scratch. Models can be downloaded directly from within the app from a curated list on Hugging Face, without manually hunting for the right GGUF files. The project is fully open source under the MIT license, developed by the community under the Mobile-Artificial-Intelligence organization on GitHub.
Who it's for
Maid appeals to local-AI enthusiasts who want one app handling both offline models and remote APIs, without switching between separate tools. Users of SillyTavern character cards get a mobile and desktop interface for the same personas.
Use cases
In practice, Maid works well for testing different GGUF models downloaded straight from Hugging Face without leaving the app, chatting with pre-configured characters on the go from a phone, and serving as one shared interface for local and cloud models on the same device.
Pricing and business model
The app is entirely free and open source under the MIT license — no fees or subscriptions. Any costs come only from using paid external APIs, such as OpenAI or Google Gemini.
Limitations and what to watch for
An official iOS release isn't currently available, leaving iPhone and iPad users without support on Apple's mobile platform. Conversation quality with local models depends heavily on your own hardware's power, as with other llama.cpp-based tools.
AI notes from local and remote conversations
Maid offers no built-in notes system of any kind — it's a pure chat interface. Anyone wanting to keep a worthwhile answer as an ai notes entry, whether it came from a local model or a remote API, has to copy it out by hand into a separate notes app.
One interface, many model sources
Maid's flexibility comes from the fact that the same chat window handles models of very different character — from fully offline GGUF files to paid cloud APIs — making it a convenient testing tool for someone experimenting with multiple providers at once.
What's worth checking before choosing
Before installing, check whether the model you're interested in already has a ready GGUF version on Hugging Face, and whether your mobile or desktop hardware can handle your chosen model size locally.
Bottom line
Maid is a flexible, free chat client combining local and remote models in one interface, at the cost of no iOS support and no notes system. Anyone who wants ai notes from such conversations to land automatically in an organized archive needs a separate app for that.
Comparison with SumizAI
Maid and SumizAI differ in scope. Maid is a chat interface handling many model sources, 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 — automatically turns into ai notes saved as Markdown files in the user's vault, with a title and place in the table of contents assigned without manual work. Anyone who wants one interface for many models with no archiving will pick Maid; anyone who wants these notes from such conversations to build a lasting archive will find SumizAI the better-fitting tool.
| Price | Free |
|---|---|
| Licence | Open Source — MIT |
| Category | AI Chatbot, Large Language Model (LLM) |
| Origin | AlternativeTo does not say |
| Platforms | Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, Android Tablet, F-Droid |
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
| Side by side | SumizAI | Maid (AI) |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $1/month, one plan, 7-day trial without a card | Free |
| Licence | Proprietary | Open Source — MIT |
| Platforms | macOS, Windows, iOS, Android | Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, Android Tablet, F-Droid |
| Category | Note-taking — AI chat into Markdown | AI Chatbot, Large Language Model (LLM) |
| Where notes live | Standard .md files in a folder you choose | AlternativeTo does not say |
| AI model | Seven providers, always on your own API key | Its description does not mention AI |
| Origin | Poland, EU | AlternativeTo does not say |
Where they differ
- Maid (AI) works with Ollama, and so does SumizAI: a local Ollama is one of its seven providers. You can keep the model on your own machine and still have the answers filed as Markdown notes rather than left in a chat window.
- Maid (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
.mdfile with a title, a place inbase.mdand 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 Maid (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.
- Maid (AI) is open source (MIT), and SumizAI is not. If reading the source is what decides it for you, that is a real argument for Maid (AI). The guarantee SumizAI offers instead is structural rather than legal: the notes are Markdown files in a folder you chose, so they open in any editor whether or not the application is running.
- AlternativeTo's description of Maid (AI) does not mention Markdown, so check what format your notes end up in before you fill it up. SumizAI writes standard
.mdfiles to a folder you picked, and an unpaid account can still export all of them.
Which one to pick
Reasons to pick Maid (AI)
- the source is open and you want to read it
- it costs nothing
Reasons to pick SumizAI
- the notes you want already exist inside conversations with an AI model
- you want the filing — title, chapter, duplicate check — to happen without you
- you want the result as plain
.mdfiles in a folder you picked - you would rather pay your AI provider directly than have a note app resell the model
Facts about Maid (AI): AlternativeTo, read 2026-08-16. SumizAI is not affiliated with Maid (AI), and the name is used only to identify the product being compared.
Taken from the AlternativeTo lists: ChatGPT. Be sure to check out SumizAI's main competitor: obsidian alternative.