Open WebUI review: the free, open-source, self-hosted interface for local and remote LLMs. Features, RAG, Ollama support, pricing, and alternatives.
Open WebUI is a free, open-source, self-hosted web interface for chatting with and managing large language models. Created by Timothy Jaeryang Baek, it launched in September 2023 as Ollama WebUI, a frontend specifically for the Ollama local LLM runtime, before being renamed to Open WebUI in January 2024 as it expanded to support many other model backends.
The project has grown into one of the most popular open-source AI interface tools, with well over 100,000 GitHub stars and hundreds of contributors, and is now maintained by a small core team at Open WebUI, Inc. alongside a large open-source community.
Open WebUI supports essentially any LLM backend, including Ollama, OpenAI-compatible APIs, LMStudio, GroqCloud, Mistral, OpenRouter, and vLLM, and adds retrieval-augmented generation with support for nine vector databases and hybrid search, letting users chat with their own documents and data.
Beyond core chat, it offers granular role-based access control for multi-user deployments, an extensibility framework (Filters, Actions, Pipes, Tools, Skills) plus MCP and OpenAPI tool integrations, integrated voice and video calling, image generation through providers like DALL-E and ComfyUI, and collaboration features such as team channels, persistent memory, calendars, and automations.
The core Open WebUI software is free and open source, self-hostable via Docker or other deployment methods with no artificial limits on users, models, or features for the community edition.
Organizations that need custom branding, guaranteed SLA-backed support, and Long-Term Support releases can purchase the Enterprise plan, priced on a custom basis by Open WebUI, Inc.
Yes, the core Open WebUI software is free and open source. An Enterprise plan with custom branding, SLA support, and Long-Term Support releases is available at custom pricing for organizations that need it.
It launched in September 2023 as Ollama WebUI and was renamed to Open WebUI in January 2024 after expanding beyond Ollama to support many other LLM backends.
It was created by developer Timothy Jaeryang Baek, who continues to lead the project's small core team at Open WebUI, Inc.
No. While it originated as an Ollama-specific frontend, it now supports OpenAI-compatible APIs, LMStudio, GroqCloud, Mistral, OpenRouter, vLLM, and other backends alongside Ollama.
Yes, it includes local retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) with support for nine vector databases and hybrid search for querying your own documents.
Yes, Open WebUI includes granular role-based access control and user groups designed for multi-user and team deployments.
Ollama itself is primarily a command-line LLM runtime with a minimal default interface, while Open WebUI is a full-featured, self-hosted web UI layer that can sit on top of Ollama or many other model backends, adding RAG, multi-user access, voice/video, and tool integrations.