Is Grux OS really free?

Yes. The app is $0 and MIT licensed, with no account, no subscription and no hosted component. You pay your model provider directly.

Is there a paid tier?

No. Nothing is gated. Both feature tiers ship in the same build.

Does Grux OS collect analytics?

No. There is no analytics SDK, no crash reporter and no telemetry package in the source tree, and the tree is public.

Is there an AI assistant with no sign up and no subscription?

Yes: Grux OS is a free AI assistant for Mac with no sign up and no subscription, because there is no server to sign up to and nothing to sell. Free usually means a trial, an upsell or your data as the payment. Grux OS is free in a duller way: there is no hosted component to charge for, so there is nothing to buy and no account to make. The app is $0 and MIT licensed. You pay your model provider directly, on your own account, at their prices, and nothing is proxied through anything the author runs, so there is no markup and no middleman holding a copy of your prompts. Run a local model through Ollama instead and the running cost is $0 as well. There is no telemetry, no analytics SDK and no crash reporter in the tree, and since the tree is public that is a claim you can check rather than one you have to accept.

Grux OS 3.0.0 · last checked 2026-09-30 · generated from the shipping release

What free costs, itemised

Item	Price	Paid to
The app	$0	Nobody. MIT licensed
An account	Does not exist	There is nothing to sign up for
Model usage, hosted	Their list price	Your provider, directly
Model usage, local	$0	Nobody. Ollama on your own hardware
Updates	$0	No updater phoning home

How to check each claim

No telemetry. Grep the tree. There is no analytics SDK, no crash reporter and no usage beacon, and the dependency graph has three direct entries.
No proxying. Your key goes from your Keychain to your provider. There is no server in the path because there is no server.
No account. Nothing in first run asks for an email address.
The binary matches the source. It is signed with a Developer ID, notarized by Apple and stapled, and spctl -a -vv /Applications/Grux.app will say so.

Why it is given away

It was a hobby project for six months, built by one person to solve one person's problem, and it got useful enough to be worth somebody else's time. Software that reads your screen and your mail should be readable back, which is the other half of the reason it is MIT rather than a download.

There is no account to make, no email to hand over and nothing to buy, which also means there is no funnel. A star on the repository is the entire ask and the only way anyone else finds out it exists.

The catch, stated plainly

12 of the 37 features sit in Labs because they are real and unfinished. Support is one person. There is no SLA, no roadmap you can hold anyone to, and if something breaks the remedy is an issue on the repository.

Where to check this

Claim	Source
The app is $0 and MIT licensed; no hosted component, nothing to buy	README, What it costs
The dependency graph has three direct entries	README, Requirements
The binary is signed with a Developer ID, notarized by Apple and stapled	README, Install
12 of the 37 features sit in Labs because they are real and unfinished	README, Feature tiers
It was a hobby project for six months, built by one person to solve one person's problem	README, Who made this

Questions

Is there an AI assistant with no sign up?: Yes. Grux OS has no account at all: you install it and use it. With a local model through Ollama you never sign up for anything. A hosted model needs an account with that provider, never with Grux.
Is Grux OS really free?: Yes. The app is $0 and MIT licensed, with no account, no subscription and no hosted component. You pay your model provider directly.
Is there a paid tier?: No. Nothing is gated. Both feature tiers ship in the same build.
Does Grux OS collect analytics?: No. There is no analytics SDK, no crash reporter and no telemetry package in the source tree, and the tree is public.

Download Grux 3.0.0 Read the source

Free, MIT licensed. macOS 14 or later, Apple silicon. 23.7 MB, signed and notarized by Apple. No account, no server, no subscription.