NextChat
Lightweight chat client for web, desktop, and mobile with one-click Vercel deployment.
About
One-click deployment made NextChat, formerly ChatGPT-Next-Web, one of the most forked AI projects on GitHub, with 88.6k stars and over 59k forks. The MIT-licensed client ships as a web PWA, a roughly 5 MB Tauri desktop app for macOS, Windows, and Linux, and an iOS app, all connecting to OpenAI, Claude, Google Gemini, DeepSeek, Azure, Baidu, ByteDance, Alibaba, and ChatGLM endpoints with user-supplied keys. Masks provide reusable prompt templates for building custom chat tools, and the app adds Model Context Protocol support behind an ENABLE_MCP flag, artifact generation and sharing, Markdown, LaTeX, and Mermaid rendering with code highlighting, and compatibility with self-hosted backends such as RWKV-Runner and LocalAI. All data stays in browser-local storage for privacy. Deploying a personal instance takes one click on Vercel or Zeabur plus an API key, or a desktop installer with no technical setup and no GPU. A paid enterprise edition adds brand customization, admin controls, knowledge base integration, and private deployment. It remains a default choice for spinning up a personal chat frontend in minutes.
Should you use NextChat?
Pick it when
Pick NextChat when you want a personal chat front end running in minutes, through a one-click Vercel or Zeabur deploy or a tiny desktop app, with your own keys, browser-local storage, and reusable Masks as prompt templates.
Look elsewhere when
Skip it for a team: data stays in each browser, and admin controls and knowledge base integration sit in the paid enterprise edition. LibreChat or Open WebUI cover multi-user setups; Cherry Studio adds document handling and 300+ assistants.
Alternatives to NextChat
- Chatbox
Comparable personal BYO-key client that adds an Android app and a direct Ollama provider, but GPL-3.0 rather than MIT, and installed apps rather than a one-click Vercel instance.
- Lobe Chat
Same easy Vercel deploy but grows into a full agent workspace with knowledge bases and a database, at the cost of a restrictive license for derivatives.
- LibreChat
Server-side multi-user auth and shared history for a team, but a Docker stack with much more setup than a one-click NextChat deploy.
- Hugging Face Chat UI
Server-side chat history in a database and a per-request model router, a better base for a shared instance, though there is no desktop or phone app.
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Details
- Category
- UI & Chat Interfaces
- Price
- Freemium
- Platform
- Hybrid
- Difficulty
- Beginner (1/5)
- License
- MIT
- Added
- Jul 29, 2026