Tech Stack for AI Apps on iOS 2026: MLX vs CoreML

TL;DR: For on-device AI apps on iOS in 2026, MLX Swift offers superior performance and better LLM support, while CoreML remains the option for classic models and older devices.

My Choice: MLX Swift

I chose MLX Swift for this project because:

1. The main use case is LLMs - MLX is designed exactly for this
2. Performance matters for UX - The difference between 10 t/s and 35 t/s is huge
3. The model ecosystem - Hundreds of pre-converted models in mlx-community
4. Apple is betting on MLX - Frequent releases and constant improvements

The Complete Stack

• Language: Swift 6
• Platform: iOS 26
• UI: SwiftUI
• State Management: @Observable
• Persistence: SwiftData
• LLM: MLX Swift
• Models: mlx-community (Qwen2.5, Phi-4, Gemma 2)

Hardware Requirements

Device	Minimum	Recommended
iPhone	15 Pro (8GB)	16 Pro (8GB)
iPad	Pro M1 (8GB)	Pro M2 (8GB)
Mac	Air M1 (8GB)	Pro M2 (16GB)

Resources

• MLX Swift GitHub
• MLX Examples
• mlx-community on HuggingFace

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