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RAMen Review: Local Session Memory for llama.cpp, With a Free Plan

·6 min readBy Hans Kuepper · Founder of PromptQuorum · Discovery engine for open-weight & open-source AI

RAMen (version 1.0.0, released on 6 November 2026) is a proprietary local layer on top of llama.cpp that saves each chat to disk so that, the maker says, it reopens in seconds, with a free plan and paid tiers. The decisive caveat is that every speed figure comes from the maker's own tests and PromptQuorum has not run the software.

Key Takeaways

  • Maintenance: version 1.0.0 was published on 6 November 2026, the day of this review, so no stale-project warning applies and the product has no track record yet.
  • Cost: a free plan with limited memory, plus paid subscriptions and a launch lifetime offer.
  • Install: a terminal one-liner on every system; there is no double-click installer and no app-store listing.
  • Data: the maker says nothing leaves your machine except the install, model downloads and the paid-plan license check.

📍 In One Sentence

RAMen is a proprietary command-line layer on llama.cpp that saves local AI chats to disk and, the maker says, speeds up long conversations, with a free plan.

💬 In Plain Terms

You install one command, start it, and point your coding agent or chat app at it; RAMen remembers each conversation so you do not wait for the model to re-read it after a restart.

📌Note: This review is based on getramenai.com, its privacy policy and license agreement, the install scripts and the GitHub release data, checked on 6 November 2026. PromptQuorum has not installed, run or benchmarked RAMen, so speed, stability and answer quality are not assessed.

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Founder-reviewed. RAMen's founder reviewed this entry's technical specs and description for accuracy. The review itself remains independent PromptQuorum editorial content.

RAMen is a proprietary command-line layer from NEOTECH Inc. that runs local models through its own build of llama.cpp, saves every chat and agent session to disk so it reopens in seconds after a restart, and says it keeps long conversations fast. It runs on Apple-silicon Macs, Windows 10 and 11 and Linux, exposes an OpenAI-compatible API, and has a free plan. This review covers what you install, what it costs, where your data goes and which claims rest only on the maker's own measurements.

RAMen Review: Local Session Memory for llama.cpp, With a Free Plan

What Is RAMen?

RAMen is a local-AI session manager made by NEOTECH Inc. that sits in front of llama.cpp, the open-source engine most local-model tools run on. It ships its own build of llama.cpp (MIT license) with two additions: it saves the model's working memory (the KV cache) for each conversation to disk and restores it when the conversation continues, and it reads only the parts of a long conversation that matter for each new word.

The maker's how-it-works page notes that llama.cpp already has slot save and restore and that small tools automate it; RAMen's claim is to do it for every session automatically, with checks that a saved cache matches the model and settings. The software is closed source under a proprietary license agreement; the public GitHub repository only hosts the download packages.

Get It

RAMen installs from the terminal with one command per system; the packages are hosted on GitHub Releases, and there is no graphical installer.

Option
How to get it
Mac (Apple silicon)Terminal: curl -fsSL https://getramenai.com/install.sh | bash
Linux (x64)Same command; picks the NVIDIA build when nvidia-smi works, otherwise the CPU build
Windows 10/11 (x64)PowerShell: irm https://getramenai.com/install.ps1 | iex
Manual downloadRAMen releases on GitHub, .tar.gz or .zip with .sha256 checksums
PhoneNo iPhone or Android app is mentioned
Websitegetramenai.com
Privacy policyRAMen privacy policy; License agreement

Version reviewed: 1.0.0 (6 November 2026). A terminal is required: after the install, ramen start downloads a model if you have none and starts RAMen in the background. The installer adds ~/.ramen/bin to your shell PATH and keeps saved chats in ~/.context-engine; rm -rf ~/.ramen removes the program.

Requirements

The maker states no minimum RAM, disk or OS-version figures; the page says only that you need a computer that runs llama.cpp.

Mac

What the sources say:
Apple silicon (M1 or newer) only; the installer refuses Intel Macs

Windows

What the sources say:
Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit; CPU build, with an NVIDIA build when an NVIDIA GPU is detected

Linux

What the sources say:
x64 only, CPU or NVIDIA build; the installer refuses ARM Linux for now

Long-chat speedup

What the sources say:
Needs an NVIDIA RTX 20-series card or newer, or an Apple-silicon Mac; it is not claimed for CPU-only machines

Models

What the sources say:
Any GGUF model, or one RAMen picks and downloads; model licenses are the model makers' own

Account

What the sources say:
None for the free plan; paid plans use a license key from the Polar store

How to Get Started

The steps follow the maker's pages; PromptQuorum has not run them.

  1. 1
    Run the installer
    Why it matters: Use the one-liner for your system; the scripts download a package and verify its SHA-256 checksum before installing.
  2. 2
    Start RAMen
    Why it matters: `ramen start` finds a model that fits your computer, downloads it from Hugging Face and runs in the background, or you point it at a GGUF file you already have.
  3. 3
    Connect your apps
    Why it matters: `ramen connect cline` (or continue, aider, opencode, open-webui) sets up the tool; anything that speaks the OpenAI API can use the local endpoint.
  4. 4
    Activate a paid plan only if you want one
    Why it matters: `ramen activate YOUR-KEY` unlocks the paid features; `ramen deactivate` frees one of the computers on a key.

Features Confirmed by the Sources

Every item below is the maker's description; the speed and quality figures are the maker's own measurements, not independent tests.

  • Session memory. Each conversation's KV cache is saved to disk as you go and restored when the conversation continues, even after a restart; many chats and agents share a few live GPU slots and the rest wait on disk. The maker reports a 70,082-token chat on a Mac mini M2 Pro with Qwen3 4B reopening in 3.7 seconds instead of a 12-minute 47-second re-read.
  • Selective reading. Instead of reading the whole memory for every new word, RAMen keeps a summary of each block and reads about 8,000 tokens' worth plus the start and the latest part of the conversation, which the maker says builds on research on query-aware sparse attention (Quest, 2024). It switches on by itself only above a length where it is faster on your machine, between 16K and about 43K tokens.
  • Vendor benchmark. On an NVIDIA RTX A6000 with Qwen3 32B and an 87K-token conversation the maker measured 20.4 tokens per second against 8.4 for normal llama.cpp, and on an NVIDIA L4 with Qwen3 4B at 128K tokens 42.2 against 9.1; the gain is small below roughly 30K to 40K tokens on a fast NVIDIA card.
  • Many agents, one GPU. Switching between agents resumes each where it stopped; the maker cites 99.7 percent of each agent's history reused when three agents share one GPU.
  • Limits the maker states. Selective reading speeds up writing, not the first read of a new long prompt; it does not stack with draft models (speculative decoding) yet; sliding-window models gain little speed.

Plans and Pricing

RAMen has a free plan and paid subscriptions sold through the Polar store; every install starts with 14 days of all features, no card needed.

Free

Price:
$0, no end date
What it includes:
Remembers the last 3 chats, one chat at a time; works with your apps

Pro

Price:
$3.99 per month or $29 per year
What it includes:
Remembers every chat and agent session, many agents on one GPU, long chats kept fast, up to 3 computers

Team

Price:
$9.99 per person per month, from 3 people
What it includes:
Pro for everyone on the team, movable seats, priority email support

Server

Price:
$149 per server per month
What it includes:
One GPU machine serving a team, a key per person, usage per person, Prometheus metrics

Enterprise

Price:
On request
What it includes:
Offline licenses for machines without internet, invoices, purchase orders, a support agreement

The site also advertises a launch offer, Pro for life at $19.99 once for the first 1,000 buyers. Prices are in US dollars and sales tax is handled at checkout; confirm them on the maker's site before buying. If a paid license ends, the license agreement says RAMen continues on the free plan.

Data Flow and Privacy

The privacy policy (effective 6 November 2026) says RAMen runs on your computer and that your prompts, files, conversations and models stay there. It lists what RAMen sends: on paid plans, at start-up, the license key, the store identifier and an anonymous machine label (the platform plus a short code derived from the machine, never its name) to the payment provider Polar; and, when ramen start downloads a model, a connection to Hugging Face, which sees your internet address and the requested file. The policy states there is no analytics, crash reporting or tracking in the software.

The website counts visits with Cloudflare Web Analytics without cookies and is hosted on GitHub Pages. Purchases go through Polar, which gives the maker your name, email address, country and what you bought. The launch-reminder form on the site stores your email address with Cloudflare. The home page says the software keeps working offline between license checks, and the Enterprise plan offers offline licenses.

📌Note: These are the maker's statements, not audit results, and PromptQuorum has not inspected network traffic. The software is closed source, so the claims cannot be checked against code.

Who Should Use It

  • Coding-agent users who run Cline, Continue, Aider or OpenCode against a local model and lose time when a long session has to be re-read after a restart.
  • Owners of an NVIDIA RTX or Apple-silicon machine who work with very long conversations, where the maker reports the largest gains.
  • Cautious buyers who want to try a free plan and a 14-day trial before paying anything.

What We Could Not Verify

  • Speed and quality. All benchmark numbers and the claim of identical answers come from the maker; PromptQuorum ran no tests and found no independent measurements.
  • Maturity. Version 1.0.0 is the first public release, and the product's Product Hunt launch is announced for 8 November 2026, so there is no long-term record on stability or support.
  • Source and audit. There is no public source code for RAMen and no third-party audit; the license agreement forbids reverse engineering except where the law allows it.
  • Requirements. No minimum RAM, disk or OS versions are published, and no Intel Mac, ARM Linux or phone support exists.
  • Licensing details. The paid-plan license check was described but its exact traffic was not examined.

Competitors and Alternatives

llama.cpp

Platforms:
Mac, Windows, Linux
Price / license:
Free / MIT
Key difference:
The open-source engine RAMen is built on; slot save and restore are manual
Articles about llama.cpp (9)

+176 more not shown

Confirm each app's current price, license and platforms on its own page before choosing.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Does selective reading change the answers a model gives?

The maker says that when the selection covers the whole conversation RAMen writes exactly the same text as normal attention, and that it gave the same answers as full attention in 54 of 54 long-document tests from 16K to 64K tokens. These are the maker's tests and were not independently checked.

What happens to my saved chats if I stop paying?

RAMen continues on the free plan, which keeps the 3 most recently used saved chats and clears older saved copies from disk as new chats are saved (the maker confirmed this to PromptQuorum on 6 November 2026). The conversations themselves stay in your app, because RAMen saves the model's working memory, not the chat text, so an older chat still works; it is simply read again from the start, like plain llama.cpp.

Does RAMen work offline?

The maker says it works offline once a model is on disk, and paid plans keep working between license checks. The first install and any model download need an internet connection.

Is RAMen made by the llama.cpp team?

No. NEOTECH Inc. makes RAMen and says it is built on llama.cpp, which ships with its MIT license; the llama.cpp project itself is a separate open-source project.

Verdict

RAMen offers a free-to-try, proprietary layer on llama.cpp that saves chats to disk, resumes agent sessions in seconds and, by the maker's measurements, speeds up very long conversations on NVIDIA RTX and Apple-silicon machines. Against that, it is a first release with no track record, it installs only from a terminal, it is closed source, paid plans contact a license server at start-up, and every performance figure is the maker's own. It suits people who run long local chats or coding agents and are willing to test it on the free plan; anyone who needs audited privacy or verified speed claims should wait for independent results.

Sources

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