Outlier is a Mac-native beta app for people who are tired of paying $200/month and still hitting usage limits. The goal is simple: cloud-style coding workflows, running locally by default, with no API token caps from Outlier. The app is early. The mission is not.
Outlier is built by one person, in Grand Rapids. No VC, no investors, no API margins to protect. That's why Free is genuinely free, Pro is $20/mo, and lifetime starts at $99. Great product, priced fairly.
🔒 Your prompts and files never leave your Mac. Local models run fully offline — only model downloads and optional web search ever touch the network, and only when you choose. No telemetry on inference. Open-weight models you can audit on HuggingFace.
Cloud coding tools are incredible, but usage caps kill momentum. Outlier is the bet that the same style of coding platform can live on your Mac: agent plans, file edits, tests, memory, vision, research, and long runs without a meter.
Every dollar goes toward the gap between where Outlier is today and where it needs to be: stronger coding models, better agent loops, faster local inference, cleaner UX, and public build logs showing exactly how we compress, speed up, test, and ship.
Community-funded. Build-in-public. No cloud token tax.
Apple Silicon only (M1/M2/M3/M4). Intel Macs not supported.
That is the pain Outlier is built around. The best AI coding tools are powerful, but they are rented, rate-limited, and cloud-hosted. Outlier is building the local version: your Mac does the work, your code stays private, and usage does not stop because a server-side meter says so.
Long coding sessions hit limits. The tool gets good right when you need it most, then cuts off. Local inference changes the economics: once the model is downloaded, every token runs on your hardware.
Private repos, customer data, personal documents, and business plans all move through someone else’s infrastructure. Outlier is local-first: the default path is your Mac, your files, your disk.
Stop paying, lose access. Outlier’s free tier remains useful forever, Pro is $20/month (or $149/year) for everything including Plus 397B, and lifetime starts at $99 — a one-time purchase that grants Pro for life while funding the product into existence.
The pricing has one job: keep local AI accessible while raising enough money to build a stronger offline coding-agent platform. Free gets Nano + Lite forever. Pro is $20/month or $149/year and adds everything — all seven model tiers including Plus 397B, memory, projects, web research, MCP, code agent v2, marathon, compare, computer use, vision, voice, and the API server. Lifetime Pro starts at $99 while Founder seats last.
No investors and no API margins to protect — that's why Free is genuinely free, Pro is $20/mo, and lifetime starts at $99.
The first 200 lifetime seats, at the lowest price local Pro will ever be. Once they fill, the $200 Founders 500 cohort opens. Directly funds the build.
For everyone who wants local private AI without a subscription.
Everything Outlier does. $149/yr saves $91 vs monthly.
14-day money-back guarantee — just email matt@outlier.host.
Opens after Founding 200 fills. Pro forever, 500 lifetime seats. Once they're gone, recurring Pro is the only path.
Outlier doesn't claim to match the best cloud coding agents yet — and honestly, that's the exciting part: today's app is the foundation, the community funds the climb, and every major step ships in public — the compression work, the benchmarks, the failed runs, the speedups, the fixes. It gets better build after build, and you can watch it happen.
Signed, notarized Mac app. Streaming chat, local sessions, seven model tiers, model downloads, memory, project files, web research, vision support, and a Pro gate that turns on the full stack.
Plan → diff → approve → patch → test → repair. The goal is not just a chat model that writes code; it is a local coding platform that can work across a repo without burning cloud usage.
Every founder seat helps pay for the runs, evals, and infrastructure to close the quality gap. Stronger local coding, better reasoning, better long-context behavior, and honest benchmark reporting.
The build logs will show how we shrink, route, cache, page, and speed up large open models so they become practical on consumer Macs instead of locked behind H100s.
This is a community bet: enough people want unlimited local AI badly enough to fund the missing pieces together. If that is you, Founders is the cleanest way to help.
The product is organized around simple expectations: Free is useful immediately with Nano + Lite. Pro ($20/mo or $149/yr) adds the other five tiers — Quick, Core, Code, Vision, and Plus 397B. The lineup below reflects the current shipping tiers.
| Tier | Plan | Best for | Disk / RAM | Speed / note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Outlier Nano Qwen3.5-4B · MLX 4-bit |
Free | Fast iteration, lightweight chat, small Macs | 2.37 GB · 6 GB min RAM | ~30-70 tok/s (Mac-dependent) |
Outlier Lite Qwen3.5-9B · MLX 4-bit |
Free | Daily local AI, writing, search, Q&A | 5.04 GB · 12 GB min RAM | Mac-dependent |
Outlier Quick Gemma-4-26B MoE |
Pro | Thinking-mode reasoning, not a code substitute | 15.61 GB · 16 GB min RAM | Mac-dependent |
Outlier Core Qwen3.6-27B · text-only |
Pro | Best default quality, reasoning, coding | 15.13 GB · 24 GB min RAM | High-end quality, fully offline |
Outlier Code Core weights + code config |
Pro | Coding workflow, lower-temp code-tuned setup | 15.13 GB · 24 GB min RAM | Same verified base as Core |
Outlier Plus Qwen3.5-397B-A17B · V9 paged |
Pro | Largest local tier · 397B MoE on high-end Macs · only on Pro or Founders | 209 GB disk · 64 GB min, 128 GB recommended | Trophy tier — capability over speed |
Outlier Vision Qwen3.6-35B-A3B · vision retained |
Pro | Images, screenshots, OCR, multimodal reasoning | 19.0 GB · 24 GB min RAM | V9 K=256: 16.31 tok/s @ 34.04 GB |
Quick / Core / Code / Vision / Plus 397B are all included with Pro ($20/mo or $149/yr) or lifetime Pro (Founding 200 / Founders 500). Code uses the same weights as Core with code-specialized configuration. Quick is useful for reasoning, not positioned as a coding tier.
Today's build is the foundation: local chat, session history, model picker, model downloads, project context, memory, web research, agent tools with approval, test panels, vision, and a Mac-native app shell. Some edges are rough. That is why the build is funded in public.
Streaming token output, persistent local history, rename/delete/pin, Markdown export, demo session on first run, cost display at $0.00, and local storage across restarts.
File read/write, shell execution with approval, permission modes, plan review card, repair loop, audit log, path scoping, project map, symbols, dependencies, snapshots, and tests.
Deep research mode, DuckDuckGo with Wikipedia fallback, source filters, export, follow-up, summary cards, trust badges, and inline citations with source excerpts.
Persistent memory in SQLite, short/medium/long-term tiers, provenance tracking, review cards, conflict detection, decay, frequency, and MEMORY.md export.
Image upload and direct image queries through Outlier Vision. Best for OCR, screenshots, diagrams, and multimodal Q&A — not positioned as the coding model.
macOS arm64 DMG, Apple notarization accepted, Gatekeeper accepted, GitHub Releases distribution, and a Tauri updater pointed at the latest manifest.
The cloud tools proved the workflow: coding agents, long-context research, file-aware assistants, and always-on help. The problem is the meter. Outlier is building the local version: Mac-native, private by default, and not capped by an Outlier API token allowance.
| Cloud AI tools | Cloud coding agents | Outlier Free | Outlier Pro | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | $20+ | Often much higher | $0 | $20/mo (or $149/yr · lifetime from $99) |
| Usage model | Server-side limits | Usage windows / caps | No Outlier token meter | No Outlier token meter |
| Where inference runs | Provider cloud | Provider cloud | Your Mac | Your Mac |
| Privacy default | Remote request | Remote repo/context | Local by default | Local by default |
| Offline use | No | No | Yes, once models download | Yes, once models download |
| Current maturity | Very mature | Very mature | Useful beta | Ambitious beta |
| Goal | Hosted assistant | Hosted coding workflow | Local baseline | Cloud-style coding workflows, local |
Important framing: Outlier is not claiming parity with the best cloud coding agents today. The beta is the foundation; Pro and Founders revenue funds the climb toward that experience locally.
Cloud AI bills you twice — your wallet and the planet. Cloud inference needs datacenters, networking, cooling, and always-growing GPU clusters. Local inference uses the Apple Silicon chip you already own — no datacenter round-trip, and no per-token meter. The cloud bill is real and rising: 2025 cost reports (e.g. CloudZero's State of AI Costs) describe enterprise AI spend climbing fast, with agentic, multi-step workflows burning far more tokens than teams budget for. Outlier's price is fixed and your local usage isn't metered.
of AI compute is inference — the token calls made every time someone uses a cloud model, now drawing more grid electricity than training did (MIT Tech Review, 2025). Outlier runs them on the Mac you already own.
Outlier local models do not create an Outlier cloud inference bill or cloud token meter.
Apple Silicon unified memory is efficient for local inference compared with shipping every prompt to a server.
This is not a claim that every local query is automatically cleaner in every situation. Hardware, model size, electricity source, and usage pattern all matter. The point is directionally important: if a huge share of everyday AI inference can move from datacenters to efficient devices people already own, the load on cloud infrastructure can drop.
That is why compression, routing, quantization, paging, and model fit are not just engineering details. They are part of the product philosophy. A useful local model is not just cheaper for the user — it can also reduce unnecessary cloud dependence for everyday tasks.
The best environmental feature is not a green badge. It is a model that is good enough, small enough, and fast enough that people actually choose to run it locally.
Practical framing: local-first when possible, cloud only when needed. Outlier’s default path is the Mac.
The old website had a strong provenance section. It belongs here. Outlier should be ambitious, but the numbers still need to be honest: source file, command, sample size, standard error, date measured.
Benchmarks should trace back to eval artifacts or sprint logs. If a number cannot point to a file, it should not become marketing copy.
The harness, version, dtype, device, shot count, and sample size matter. Smoke tests stay smoke tests.
Small benchmark lifts are not magic. Outlier’s public story should separate strong absolute scores from statistically significant improvements.
The goal is cloud-style coding workflows running locally. The current beta is not yet equal to the best cloud coding agents, and the site should say that clearly.
The community funds model runs, evals, compression, speed work, agent loops, and UX hardening. The process is part of the product.
Outlier went from idea to shipped beta in about a month. More runway means more focused cycles on model quality, agents, and polish.
Current site-safe headline numbers: v1.11.593 shipped as a notarized Mac DMG; Free includes Nano + Lite; Pro ($20/mo or $149/yr) adds everything including Plus 397B; lifetime Pro from $99 (Founding 200) or $200 (Founders 500); local generation has no Outlier API token meter.
Founders and chip-ins are not abstract support. They fund specific work: better coding models, better local speed, more reliable agents, better tests, and a public process that shows the wins and failures.
Notarized DMG, seven model tiers, local chat, sessions, downloads, memory, project context, research, vision, and Pro upgrade.
● Live betaThe product goal is a local coding-agent loop that can work across real projects without burning paid cloud usage.
● Funded by Pro + FoundersBetter coding performance means disciplined evals, better prompts/configs, distillation experiments, and no inflated benchmark claims.
● Community-fundedMake bigger open models practical on consumer Macs through paging, caching, quantization, routing, and product-level hardware honesty.
Always improvingThe pitch is not “trust us.” The pitch is: help fund the work, use the beta, report what breaks, and watch the process of making local AI better in public.
This is the call to action: buy Founders, subscribe to Pro, or chip in whatever you can. The money goes into making Outlier better — coding-agent quality, local model quality, speed, compression, and the public process behind all of it.
Outlier went from idea to a shipped, notarized Mac app in about a month. That included seven model tiers, local inference, agents, memory, vision, payments, packaging, and the first public build. Imagine what this can become with more runway and two more months of focused building. We will take anything you can give us. Thank you.
Lifetime Pro — everything Outlier does, forever. Founding 200 is $99 once (200 seats, sells first); Founders 500 is $200 once and opens after Founding 200 sells out. Early builds. Founder recognition. A direct vote for local AI with no API token caps. Once the lifetime seats are gone, recurring Pro is the only path.
Become a Founder →Want to fund the work without buying Pro? Chip in any amount · Sponsor a benchmark run or feature
The community is not a side quest. It is how this gets built: users testing real workflows, reporting what breaks, funding the next sprint, and holding the benchmarks honest. The more people using it, the faster it gets better.
/restart if it wedges.The cloud tools proved what the workflow should feel like. Now we build the version that runs locally, belongs to the user, and has no API token cap from Outlier mid-sprint.