On-Device AI Budget App — Local LLM, No Cloud Inference
Cloud AI assistants for budgeting send every transaction to a remote server for "intelligence". Budgie runs the LLM and embeddings on your phone — your data never leaves.
Why this matters
Cloud AI assistants for budgeting send every transaction to a remote server for "intelligence". Budgie runs the LLM and embeddings on your phone — your data never leaves.
Budgie vs. the category
Qwen3 1.7B for chat-style suggestions and a 768-dim embedding model for nearest-neighbor lookups. Both run via ONNX Runtime on iOS and Android.
Roughly 1 GB combined. The download is one-time, opt-in, and only triggers if you turn on AI features.
A cloud assistant ships your transaction titles to a remote model and trusts the provider's privacy policy. Budgie's models live on your device — there's no provider to trust.
Inference runs in milliseconds for embeddings and a few seconds for the LLM, only when you trigger it. Background impact is negligible.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Budgie | Cloud AI budget assistants |
|---|---|---|
| Where AI runs | On your phone | Vendor's cloud / remote AI service |
| What gets sent | Nothing | Every transaction title, often more |
| Works offline | Yes | No |
| AI subscription required | No | Often yes |
| Privacy from AI provider | Total — no provider exists | Bound by their privacy policy |
| Suggestion quality | Improves with your corrections | Static, plus your data trains their model |
Frequently Asked Questions
Which models does Budgie run on-device?
How big is the download?
How is this different from a cloud AI assistant?
Does on-device AI drain battery?
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