Pulse Local, a Mac budgeting app, runs its AI chat models on your own machine

Pulse Local is a budgeting app for Mac that runs its AI chat models on your own computer, that means your transactions and your questions about them never leave your machine.

The makers draw a line between two things. Many apps say they are "local" because your ledger, meaning your list of transactions, sits on your disk. But when you ask a question in the chat, the question and the rows that answer it often go to a model hosted by someone else. Pulse Local says it keeps both on your computer. The models are files stored next to your ledger, so the app has no server to send anything to.

The app is described as a full budgeting tool, not just a privacy demo. It has plans and targets, rules, rollover, splits, cash flow and a forecast. The chat answers from your own figures. You can ask where your money went, compare months, or check what is left in a budget.

The makers say spending answers are calculated from your transactions and read twice before a figure is shown. Labels above an answer show what was counted, such as the month and category, and you can select one to change it. If the two readings disagree, Pulse says it is not sure instead of guessing. AI answers are labelled as such. The app explains your figures and common budgeting terms, but it leaves decisions to you.

The team is open about what you give up. There is no bank connection, so you import a CSV file from your bank instead. There is no sync, so your ledger exists on one machine only. The app is Mac first and Apple Silicon only, and older Intel Macs are not supported. Windows is listed as next. The chat reads and answers in English only.

The small models also have limits. The makers say they are worse than a frontier model, meaning one of the largest cloud models, on open-ended questions. So ordinary code does most of the work. With the double-check turned on, a money answer takes 12 to 14 seconds.

On currency, you pick your country once, from a list of 75, and the ledger is kept in that currency. Figures are shown the way that country writes them, such as 1.234,56 € in Berlin or ¥1,311 in Tokyo. The app does no currency conversion. If you import a file in another currency, it lands as written and the import says so. Bank files can be imported in any language.

Pricing is unusual. Every feature is free, with no account. You can also pay $20, $40 or an amount you choose, starting at one dollar, as a one-time payment through Stripe. The makers say nothing in the app checks which option you picked. Bank sync is the one feature with a running cost, so it has its own price, the Sync Pass, at $29 a year.

The team describes itself as a small group of ML practitioners and product people. They say they tune small open models to answer money questions, benchmark them against cloud models in the open, and publish the weights on Hugging Face. The app is in beta, signed and notarised by Apple, and updates itself.