Open WebUI: review, pricing, security and alternatives

What Open WebUI does

Open WebUI belongs to the chat interfaces family: multi-model chat interfaces, often self-hostable, with built-in tools, agents and MCP servers. On our grid it ranks #5 of the 17 projects of this family listed in the directory.

You use it from: web app and API. Usable models: GPT (OpenAI), local models (Ollama, llama.cpp, vLLM…), and any OpenAI-compatible model. It can run on your own machine or server.

Who is Open WebUI for?

It targets people who want a single chat interface for several models, often self-hosted, with tools and agents plugged in. Typical tasks people give it:

• chat with several models from one window
• share an internal assistant with a team
• connect documents and tools to the chat

It is a good candidate if you prefer doing everything in a browser, with no install, your data must stay on your machines, and you want the option of a local model, with no API fees.

Access and human control

Its documentation does not detail the access granted to the agent: check the settings before connecting it to your accounts.

We could not establish whether it asks for human approval before sensitive actions: test it first on an unimportant account or folder.

Open WebUI pricing

The code is public but the repository declares no licence: reuse is not formally allowed. The real cost comes from model calls: each loop step sends the whole context back to the model, and a task of several dozen steps can cost far more than a single question. The LLM price calculator estimates it for the chosen model.

Getting started with Open WebUI

1. Install it: the project ships as a Python package (install with pip or uv). The exact command is in the repository README.
2. Pick the model: an API key from a provider, or a local model if your machine has enough graphics memory (the VRAM calculator tells you).
3. Give it a first playground with nothing at stake: a test folder, a secondary account or a throwaway project. Only open your real accounts once you have seen how it behaves.
4. Give it a short, checkable task, review the result and its action log, then raise the difficulty step by step.

Security: risk level

The interface stores your API keys and conversation history: protect its access and backups.

Points found for Open WebUI:

• No licence: legally shaky for company use.

Three habits: least privilege (minimal rights, dedicated keys), human approval for irreversible actions, a sandbox for code execution. The AI agent security check reviews your setup in a few minutes.

Project activity and releases

Created on October 6, 2023, the open-webui/open-webui repository has 156,643 stars, 22,800 forks and 176 open issues, with 19,602 commits in total. It received changes this month.

Over the last 52 weeks: 6,219 commits, an average of 119.6 per week.

175 releases in total; 30 in the last twelve months. Latest release: v0.12.3, on October 16, 2026.

Open WebUI vs other chat interfaces

GitHub stars of the best-rated open-source projects in the chat interfaces family. Stars measure attention, not quality: a heavily promoted project collects them fast, a specialised tool will have few.

Open WebUI and other chat interfaces at a glance

The 7 best-ranked agents in the same family, 7 of them open source. The score out of 100 only applies to open-source projects; for proprietary services we show the published entry price. A dash marks information the documentation does not state.

How we rated it

Score: 83/100, computed only from public, verifiable data, with no subjective testing or partnership:

• Adoption 38/40: 156,643 stars on a log scale (40 points from about 200,000).
• Activity 30/30: last commit less than a month ago, 16 releases in six months, 6,219 commits in a year.
• Framework 15/30: licence, default human approval, self-hosting, model choice and documentation site.

The score does not say whether the agent will succeed at your tasks: it measures how solid the project is. The full grid is on the method page.