FAQ
Questions, answered.
Privacy, quotas, billing and the difference between local and hosted.
General
What is LU Labs?
A privacy-first desktop app for local AI. It runs local chat, a coding agent, and image & video generation entirely on your own machine, plus optional hosted plans if you would rather not manage a GPU.
Is there a content filter?
In local mode there is no external content filter sitting between you and the model. The model you load defines its own behaviour; nothing is silently blocked or logged by a cloud service.
Which models can I run?
Anything your local backend supports. LU Labs auto-detects 12 runtimes including Ollama, LM Studio, vLLM and llama.cpp, and drives ComfyUI for images and video.
Do the unrestricted models work in Agent and Code?
Yes. On hosted plans every chat model in the catalog can call tools, the unrestricted ones included, so Agent mode and the coding agent run on them the same as on any other model. The model picker marks each row, so you can see before you pick.
What are the limits on hosted image and video?
Text has no filter. Hosted image and video allow nudity but stop at hardcore pornography, which is a payment-network limit rather than a taste one. Sexual content involving minors is refused everywhere, always. Want no boundary at all? Run the image and video models locally: that path is free and has no server in it.
Privacy
Does anything leave my machine?
In local mode, no: not prompts, files, images or telemetry. Nothing is ever sent automatically. Hosted plans process on managed NVIDIA H100, A100 and B200 class GPUs, but only the request you explicitly send.
Do you collect analytics?
No phone-home, no analytics SDK, no crash pings on local mode. It runs entirely on your machine, so nothing is sent anywhere.
What happens to background processes?
The ComfyUI process is auto-killed when you close the app, so nothing keeps running or listening after you quit. Your chats are stored on your own disk and survive restarts.
Pricing & billing
Is the app really free?
Yes. Self-hosting is free forever. You only pay if you choose a hosted plan so we run the GPUs for you.
Monthly or yearly?
Both. Yearly billing gives you two months free versus paying monthly. You can switch or cancel at any time from your account.
Hosted vs self-host
Why pay if local is free?
Convenience and hardware. Hosted plans need no GPU, no setup and no maintenance: the same studios, running on managed NVIDIA H100, A100 and B200 class GPUs, in your browser.
What GPUs do the hosted plans run on?
Managed NVIDIA data-center GPUs. Chat and code run on H100 and A100 class hardware; image, video and voice run on H100 and B200 class hardware. You never rent, set up or maintain a card yourself, and you only pay per generation through credits.
Do I get a GPU, or can I upload my own model?
No. A hosted plan is not GPU rental. You generate from our curated catalog of open-weight models running on managed GPUs; there is no raw GPU to manage and you don't upload your own base model. You can train LoRA style adapters on top of our base models. If you need a specific model we don't host, self-hosting is free and runs anything your own hardware supports.
Are hosted results different?
Same studios. Hosted runs a curated set of fast models; Pro and Max unlock the full open-weight catalog, and each tier up gives a much larger monthly credit budget.
Can I move between them?
Anytime. There is no lock-in: export your work and self-host, or start hosted and drop to local whenever you like.