BYOAIK (Bring Your Own AI Key) is a directory of AI tools that run on your own API key.

Local Deep Research

Local-first agentic deep-research assistant that produces cited reports across web, academic, and private sources.

Category:: Research Tools
Maintenance:: Actively developed (last commit today)
Pricing:: Open Source
Open source:: Yes (MIT)
Self-hostable:: Yes
Local-first:: Yes
Platforms:: Web, Self-hosted, CLI, Library/SDK, Docker
AI providers (bring your own key):: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, OpenRouter, Ollama, Custom / OpenAI-compatible
API key storage:: Configured by environment variable
Key risk level:: LOW
Trust score:: 85/100

Local Deep Research (LDR) is an open-source, self-hosted AI research assistant that runs autonomous multi-step "deep research" over many sources (web via SearXNG/Tavily/SerpAPI/Brave, academic via arXiv/PubMed/Semantic Scholar, Wikipedia, and your own private documents through LangChain retrievers), then synthesizes findings into reports with inline citations. It is designed to run entirely locally and encrypted, but supports a wide range of LLM backends. Users bring their own API keys for cloud LLMs (OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, OpenRouter's 100+ models, plus any OpenAI- or Anthropic-compatible endpoint) and for premium search providers; local models via Ollama, LM Studio, and llama.cpp incur no cost. Keys are configured either through environment variables (e.g. LDR_LLM_OPENAI_API_KEY, LDR_LLM_ANTHROPIC_API_KEY) or directly in the web Settings UI (Settings -> LLM Provider -> select provider and enter credentials). It ships a web UI (localhost:5000), Docker images with GPU support, a CLI, a Python client library plus HTTP REST API, and an MCP server for Claude Desktop/Code integration. v1.7.0 (June 2026) added an interactive multi-turn Chat Mode with live citation streaming.

Why this trust score (85/100)

Trust measures how the tool treats your API key and how much of that has been verified. It contains no popularity signal.

Key Safety 22/25: The key is supplied by an environment variable or local config file you control.
Request Routing 17/20: Requests go straight from you to the AI provider.
Transparency 20/20: Source is public under MIT, so anyone can check how the key is handled.
Privacy 15/15: Local-first: it works without sending your data anywhere. Can be self-hosted, so the data path stays inside infrastructure you control. The project states it sends no telemetry.
Maintenance 10/10: Actively developed: commits within the last three months.
Verification Confidence 1/10: Compiled from public documentation by an AI-assisted pass, not independently confirmed.

What was checked

Verification tier RESEARCH_ASSISTED, derived from the evidence below and not set by hand.

[REPORTED · RESEARCH] This listing was compiled by an AI-assisted research pass over the tool's public website, README and documentation. No person independently confirmed it.
[STRONG · SOURCE_SCAN] Supports a local model backend, so it can run with no cloud provider key at all. source
[REPORTED · SOURCE_SCAN] The project states it sends no telemetry. source
[CONFIRMED · SOURCE_SCAN] Ships a container definition, so it can be self-hosted on your own infrastructure. source
[CONFIRMED · SOURCE_SCAN] Most recent commit 2026-08-15, about 0 month(s) ago. source

How your API key is handled

Your API key is supplied via an environment variable or local config file. Requests are sent directly to the AI provider. Because it can be self-hosted, your key never has to touch a third-party backend.

Setup

Install the tool, set your provider API key as an environment variable (or in its config file), and pick a model.