Open WebUI
AI
Self-hosted AI chat interface that connects to Ollama and OpenAI-compatible models and runs offline on your own hardware.
Open WebUI is a self-hosted web interface for AI chat: it connects to Ollama, OpenAI, Anthropic and other OpenAI-compatible providers from one UI, and adds knowledge bases with retrieval, web search, code execution, voice and image generation. It is built for teams and organisations that want conversations, models and documents to stay on infrastructure they control, and it scales from a single Docker container to replicas behind a load balancer. The free edition is permissively licensed but not fully open source: branding may not be removed or altered in deployments above 50 end users, white-labelling and enterprise-only offerings such as Terminals need a paid enterprise licence, and multi-instance operation needs external PostgreSQL and Redis instead of the bundled SQLite and ChromaDB.
Key features
- Chat with Ollama, OpenAI, Anthropic or any compatible provider
- Run two models side-by-side and compare responses
- Hybrid search: BM25 + vector search with cross-encoder reranking
- Import ChatGPT exports; format is auto-detected and converted
- Python tools, MCP, OpenAPI and pipelines for extensibility
- Speech-to-text, text-to-speech and hands-free voice calls
- RBAC, SSO/OIDC/LDAP and SCIM 2.0 for teams
- Add replicas behind a load balancer; state in shared services
Self-hosted editions
- Community (self-hosted)Free self-hosted
- LicenceSource availableDeploymentSelf-hosted
- Enterprise LicensePrice on request
- LicenceProprietaryDeploymentSelf-hosted
Limits, notes & source
Community (self-hosted)
- Limits
- No white-labelling or branding changes above 50 end users, no enterprise-exclusive offerings such as Terminals, and no guaranteed or SLA support; multi-instance scaling needs external PostgreSQL and Redis instead of the bundled SQLite and ChromaDB.
- Notes
- Licence read from the raw file on 2026-09-21 (2,819 bytes): it is the BSD-3-Clause text with an added clause 4 that forbids altering or removing Open WebUI branding in any deployment, except deployments of 50 or fewer end users in a rolling 30 days, prior written permission, or an enterprise licence. A restriction on top of an open licence is why the category is SOURCE_AVAILABLE rather than OPEN_SOURCE. Price: the docs describe a 'Free community edition for unlimited users on your own infrastructure' and the enterprise page marks 'Standard Use (Internal use with original branding exactly intact.)' as Free, so no amount is recorded.
Enterprise License
- Limits
- Terms, seats and price are set in the agreement; the vendor publishes no figure, seat count, currency or billing period. Licences are available to registered organisations, not individuals.
- Notes
- Read on 2026-09-21: the deployment-model table marks white-labelling, rebranding, modified branding and enterprise-exclusive offerings as 'Enterprise License Required', and the sales form asks for an expected end-user count rather than quoting per seat. No price is published, so priceModel is QUOTE with every price field null instead of an invented number.
Pros & cons
Strengths
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- Stateless application layer: add replicas behind a load balancer as demand grows Source
Trade-offs
- Above 50 end users, removing or altering Open WebUI branding is a breach without an enterprise licence Source
- White-labelling and enterprise-only offerings such as Terminals need a paid enterprise licence Source
- Multi-instance setups require external PostgreSQL and Redis; bundled SQLite is not supported Source
Open WebUI replaces
Products this app is built to take over from, with the vendor's own evidence.
Moving your content across: Documented per product: what you do on the side you are leaving, what this app does with the result, and what does not survive the trip. Every step links to the page that documents it.
- ImportIn ChatGPT, export your conversations, then use Settings > Data Controls > Import Chats in Open WebUI.Source
- ImportOpen WebUI supports ChatGPT exports: conversations exported from OpenAI are auto-detected and converted on import.Source
- CaveatImported chats are added alongside existing ones and each gets a new ID, so re-importing the same file creates duplicates.Source
- CaveatThe vendor lists Projects, the GPT Store and deep research among what ChatGPT does well, so those have no direct Open WebUI equivalent.Source
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