Alternatives to Elia

A keyboard-driven terminal app for chatting with cloud and local large language models. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.

Replacements

Listings that take over the same core job as Elia.

  • oterm

    A terminal chat client for Ollama, OpenAI, Anthropic and other language model providers.

    FreeOpen sourceWindowsmacOSLinuxCommand line

    oterm is an MIT-licensed terminal chat client for Ollama and hosted providers that also runs on Windows and installs with one uvx command.

  • AIChat

    A command-line tool for chatting with language models, with a shell assistant, RAG and agents.

    FreeOpen sourceCommand line

    AIChat is a dual MIT or Apache-2.0 terminal tool for many providers and Ollama that adds a shell assistant, RAG and agents, configured through YAML files.

  • LLM

    A command-line tool and Python library for prompting remote and locally installed language models.

    FreeProprietaryCommand line

    LLM is a command-line tool and Python library that logs prompts to SQLite and adds models through plugins, though local models need an extra plugin.

  • tgpt

    A cross-platform command-line tool for chatting with AI models in the terminal without API keys.

    FreeOpen sourceWindowsmacOSLinuxCommand line

    tgpt is a single Go binary for terminal chat that needs no API key, relying on third-party providers that can change or stop working.

  • ShellGPT

    A command-line AI assistant that generates shell commands, code snippets and documentation from prompts.

    FreeOpen sourceWindowsmacOSLinuxCommand line

    ShellGPT is an MIT-licensed Python terminal assistant geared to generating shell commands and code rather than a full-screen chat interface.

Similar software

Related functionality, not a direct replacement.