LM Studio — Serve on Local Network

Enabling Serve on Local Network makes the LM Studio API server accessible to other devices on the same LAN — not just localhost.

How It Works

By default the server binds to 127.0.0.1 (localhost only)
With the option enabled it binds to your machine's local network IP (e.g. 192.168.x.x)
The API access URL shown in LM Studio updates to reflect the new binding
All existing API endpoints stay the same — only the host changes

Scenario	Why useful
Thin-client devices (laptop, tablet, phone)	Offload inference to a powerful desktop on the same network
Shared team access	Multiple people hit one LM Studio instance
IoT / edge devices	Raspberry Pi or similar calls the API over LAN
Local service mesh	Other self-hosted services (Home Assistant, scripts) consume the LLM

Open LM Studio → Local Server tab
Toggle Serve on Local Network → ON
Note the updated API access URL displayed (e.g. http://192.168.1.x:1234)
On client devices, point base_url to that address instead of http://localhost:1234

One toggle — no firewall rule changes required on most home routers (LAN-to-LAN is open by default)
The API surface is identical to localhost; only the bind address differs
Useful when pairing a powerful homelab machine with weaker clients — see wiki/homelab/_index for server options
Combine with wiki/claude-code/lmstudio-headless-service to run the server without the GUI on a headless machine
For redirecting Claude Code itself to the local server, see wiki/claude-code/lmstudio-anthropic-compat

raw/Serve on Local Network.md — clipped from lmstudio.ai/docs/developer/core/server/serve-on-network