Free private AI chat: what each app's free tier gets you

The Morse teamPublished October 27, 2026Facts checked October 27, 202610 min read

A free private AI chat costs you nothing, but each free tier keeps a different part of the privacy for its paid plan. As of October 27, 2026, Duck.ai and Brave Leo need no account, Proton's Lumo lets guests chat and saves a free account's history for 7 days, Venice gives you 10 text prompts a day and keeps its enclave modes for Pro, Maple and Confer encrypt every free chat end to end but need an account, and Morse Free gives you 15 messages a day, history encrypted on your device, and a guest chat with no account, with end-to-end encryption on Pro.

We read each app's own pricing, privacy, and help pages on October 27, 2026, plus Brave's open-source browser code where Brave's pages left a gap, and built the table below from them. None of the seven trains on your chats by its own terms, and four of the six other apps put an enclave on at least one free model. They differ on whether you sign up, where your history sits, and whether the host can read what you type.

What does each free private AI chat include?

As of October 27, 2026. Each cell for another app links to that app's own page. "Enclave on free" means a free chat whose prompt is decrypted only inside attested hardware, so the host can't read it.

Which free AI chats keep the host from reading your prompt?

Maple, Confer, two of Duck.ai's models, and Brave Leo's GLM 5.3 Flash do it for free. Venice and Morse put it on their paid plans, and Lumo's pages describe no enclave on any plan.

Maple lists "End-to-end encryption" as the first line of its $0 plan (Maple), and Confer's app describes its free Guest plan as having "Full privacy features" (Confer). We compare those two designs in Maple vs Confer. DuckDuckGo says two free models, gpt-oss-120b and Gemma 4 31B, run on Tinfoil in a Trusted Execution Environment, and labels them "zero provider visibility" (DuckDuckGo).

Brave's October 15, 2026 announcement of end-to-end encrypted GLM 5.3 Flash doesn't say which tier gets it (Brave). Brave's browser code, read on GitHub on October 27, 2026, gives that model the same free-and-Premium access as Claude Haiku and GPT Luna (Brave). Brave also says that, for now, "your browser relies on the gateway for this check" (Brave).

Some of the guides that rank for private AI chatbots point the other way. A private-chatbot roundup updated October 13, 2026 says prompt decryption at the host applies to every cloud assistant it covers "except Venice's TEE and end-to-end encrypted modes" (AI Tools Bakery). Of the apps that roundup covers, Venice's are the only enclave modes you can't use for free. Venice says they "require a Venice Pro subscription," which costs $18 a month (Venice; Venice). Venice's own roundup, dated July 22, 2026, still lists Duck.ai's free models as GPT-4o mini and Claude 3 Haiku and its paid tier as "not yet widely available" (Venice). DuckDuckGo's help pages now list Claude 4.5 Haiku, GPT-6 Luna, and the two Tinfoil models for free, and Plus and Pro subscriptions above them (DuckDuckGo).

Is Duck.ai really free and private?

Yes, up to a daily cap that DuckDuckGo doesn't put a number on. Its usage page says free use has "a daily limit," that it resets at midnight UTC, and that the cap is enforced in a way "engineered" to be "completely anonymous," so hitting it doesn't require an account (DuckDuckGo). Free stops short of the bigger models: GPT-5.6 Terra and Claude Sonnet 4.6 need Plus, and Claude Opus 4.8 needs Pro (DuckDuckGo). On free models other than the two Tinfoil ones, the provider still reads your prompt, under the deletion terms we compare in Duck.ai vs Lumo vs Brave Leo.

Is Lumo free, and what does the free plan keep?

Yes, in two ways, and the free history has an expiry date. As a guest you can "instantly start a chat with limited access without an account," and the chat is gone when the session ends. A free Proton account saves your chats encrypted, but Proton says Free chats "are saved for 7 days only," with one Project and limited image generations (Proton). Keeping history longer takes Lumo Plus, $9.99 a month billed yearly, or $119.88 every 12 months (Proton). How Lumo handles your prompt is the same on every plan, and our Proton Lumo review goes through it.

Can you use Brave Leo free without an account?

Yes. Brave says "No account or signup is required to access the free Brave Leo experience" (Brave). Brave's code lists GPT Luna, Claude Haiku, Qwen 3.6 35B, GLM 4.7 Flash, and GLM 5.3 Flash among the models open to free users, while Claude Sonnet, Claude Opus, Grok 4.7, and Kimi K2.5 stay on Premium (Brave). The free tier has no published cap; Brave says only that access varies "depending on traffic levels and usage," and Premium, at $14.99 a month or $149.99 a year, buys higher limits (Brave; Brave). Brave's privacy policy covers what Leo keeps.

What does Venice's free plan include?

Ten text prompts and 15 image prompts a day on "Base AI models" (Venice). You can chat before you sign up; Venice's privacy policy, effective June 2, 2026, says that without an account it collects "basic metadata" such as your IP address (Venice). Free stops at Private and Anonymous modes. Of Anonymous, Venice says "you should assume the provider is storing your content" (Venice). Our Venice vs Maple comparison covers which models sit in each mode.

Are Maple and Confer free?

Both have a free tier that keeps the full encryption and cuts the volume. Maple Free includes end-to-end encryption and web search, and Pro, at $20 a month, adds "All AI models including Kimi, GLM, DeepSeek, and GPT-OSS," plus image and document uploads, so Free runs a smaller set its pricing page doesn't name (Maple). Confer's Guest plan, as its web app describes it, gives you 20 messages a day and up to 5 saved chats, and Membership, at $34.99 a month, lifts both caps and adds file attachments (Confer; App Store). We compare how the two handle keys and sign-in in Maple vs Confer.

Which free AI chat doesn't save your data?

On a free tier, guest chats come closest: Lumo and Duck.ai need no sign-up, as our list of which AI chatbots need a phone number shows, and a Morse guest chat stays in the tab's memory and is never saved. We go through where each app keeps the chats it does save in AI that doesn't save your data.

How Morse Free keeps your chats private

On most free tiers above, a host reads your prompt, and on several, your history waits on the company's servers or behind a sign-up. Morse Free answers the second two. Your first message needs no account, and your history never leaves your device. For the host, you choose, chat by chat, what it learns about you and what it may keep.

You don't need an account to start. A message sent from the Morse home page opens a guest chat, kept in the tab's memory and never saved. "Keep this chat" signs you up with an emailed code or Google and carries it over. There's no training switch to find, because we don't train AI on your content, sell your data, or show ads.

• Anonymous, so GPT and Claude never learn who asked. Before a message goes out, our proxy takes off your account, email, and IP address and sends it under Morse's own account. The provider still sees the words, without knowing it's you, and may hold them for a limited time to check for abuse, under its own policy. Keep real names out of the message itself.
• Private, so an open-weight model like GLM answers and nothing is kept. Morse has zero data retention agreements with its inference, search, and other providers. When a provider confirms on a reply that it kept nothing, Morse checks for that and turns away any reply without it. A new chat opens in this mode.
• E2EE, when you're ready to pay for a chat no one else can read. Pro adds it, at $19 a month or $17 billed yearly. Your browser verifies the enclave's proof on its own, then seals the message so only that enclave can open it, and our servers pass along ciphertext. It works with open-weight models, leaves out web search and image generation, and depends on the enclave hardware and attestation working as designed.

Whatever the plan, history sits encrypted in your browser and locks when you sign out, opened by one key kept on your device and one our server hands over at sign-in. With no chats on our side, we usually have very little to give authorities. Clearing the browser removes them for good, so copy out anything you want to keep. The Free plan covers 15 messages a day with GPT-6 Luna, Claude Haiku 5.5, GLM 5.3 Flash, and more, unlimited character messages, 3 images a day with Z-Image Turbo, web search, and coding and file tools.

Choose a free plan, or choose Morse

• Choose Duck.ai if you want no sign-up at all and a free model in an enclave, and a daily limit with no published number suits you.
• Choose Lumo if you want guest chats erased each session and you already use a Proton account.
• Choose Brave Leo if you already use the Brave browser and want Claude Haiku and GPT Luna free, with no account.
• Choose Venice if you want free image prompts and history kept in your browser, and you don't need its enclave modes until Pro.
• Choose Maple or Confer if you want every free chat end-to-end encrypted and don't mind an account and history on their servers.
• Choose Morse if you want a first chat with no account, then GPT-6 Luna, Claude Haiku 5.5, and GLM 5.3 Flash free, history encrypted on your device instead of a server, no ads or training, and E2EE, characters, and images in the same account when you need them.

Send a message from the home page without an account, or start free with no card. If a phone number is what you're avoiding, see which AI chatbots need one.

Morse publishes this comparison. We've tried to keep it fair; if something's wrong or out of date, email hello@trymorse.ai.

DuckDuckGo and Duck.ai are trademarks of Duck Duck Go, Inc. Morse is not affiliated with or endorsed by Duck Duck Go, Inc.

Proton and Lumo are trademarks of Proton AG. Morse is not affiliated with or endorsed by Proton AG.

Brave and Leo are trademarks of Brave Software, Inc. Morse is not affiliated with or endorsed by Brave Software, Inc.

Venice is a trademark of Venice.ai. Morse is not affiliated with or endorsed by Venice.ai.

Maple is a trademark of Maple Privacy Labs Inc. Morse is not affiliated with or endorsed by Maple Privacy Labs Inc.

Confer is a trademark of Confer Enterprises, Inc. Morse is not affiliated with or endorsed by Confer Enterprises, Inc.