Minne and Elephas — which one is for you?

Minne and Elephas get mentioned in the same breath because both are Mac-native AI assistants that work across your apps and both take privacy seriously. But they are built on different bets, and one of them is probably obviously right for you. This page is honest about which — Elephas is good software, and Minne is young.

The short version: Elephas is a polished, commercial assistant with a knowledge base you build from your documents. Minne is a free, open-source memory that builds itself from what you do, and writes from it.

What Elephas does well

From Elephas's own site, checked at the date in the footer:

• Super Brain — a knowledge base you assemble from PDFs, Word and Excel files, Apple Notes, Notion, Obsidian and more, indexed on your Mac, with AI answers that cite their sources.
• Super Command — a keyboard shortcut that summarises, rewrites, translates or drafts in any app.
• A privacy story with real engineering in it — on-device indexing, automatic redaction of 28 types of sensitive data before anything goes to a cloud model, and a fully offline mode.
• AI included — plans bundle monthly AI credits, so it works without any key or account elsewhere; you can also bring keys from 15+ providers.
• Mac and iOS, years of releases, a paying user base.

Pricing at time of checking: free plan with 20 credits monthly, then $19/$39/$49 per month by credit tier, with a yearly discount.

Where Minne differs

• The memory feeds itself. Elephas answers from documents you give it; Minne watches the work itself — the text of the windows you are in, via the Accessibility APIs — and an agent distils it into a wiki of people, projects and decisions. Nobody files anything.
• The memory is plain markdown on disk. One page per subject in ~/Minne, open-in-Obsidian compatible, with a schema file you own. Read it, edit it, take it with you.
• Free and MIT-licensed. No tiers, no credits, no account. You bring the model: an API key, Ollama on your own machine, or a Claude/ChatGPT subscription sign-in. The code is public and auditable, which for a tool that reads your screen text is not a small thing.
• Drafts that know your week. Tap right-Option in a reply and the draft already carries what you agreed on Tuesday — because the memory was there.

Choose Elephas if…

• You want answers from documents — contracts, papers, meeting notes — and a mature tool for querying them.
• You want AI bundled in the price, with no key or provider decisions.
• You want iOS, onboarding, support, and software that has been shipping for years.

Choose Minne if…

• You want the memory built from your work, automatically, rather than from files you curate.
• You want it in plain markdown you own, from an app you can read the source of, for free.
• You are comfortable with early software — Minne is new, and says so.

No scores and no winner: the honest summary is that Elephas is the safer choice today and Minne is the more radical bet on what a memory should be. If Minne's bet appeals, it is a two-minute install on macOS 14+. See also Minne and Goldfish and Minne and Raycast AI.

Product facts on this page were checked against each product's own published material on 2026-08-26. Something outdated? Say so and it will be fixed.

Free, open source, and yours to read. macOS 14 and later.