Review · 27 October 2026 · sample post
Open WebUI with Ollama, reviewed
Verdict: good enough for a team of up to a dozen on one GPU box. Free to run; the licence asks you to keep its branding.
Open WebUI is the chat front end I would hand a small team today. It installs in one container, the model switcher and document chat work, and the part to read twice is the licence, not the code.
Test setup and results
Sample post: the findings below show the format of a review.
- Install
One Docker container beside Ollama, data on a named volume. Running in under half an hour.
- Accounts
Three users, one admin. Sign-ups held for approval, models limited per group.
- Document chat
Forty PDFs of runbooks in one collection. Answers cite the file; tables inside PDFs come out ragged.
- Models
Switching between three local models mid-chat, plus one paid API through an OpenAI-compatible key.
- Upgrades
Two releases pulled during the month. Both kept chats and settings.
Three chat front ends compared
Licences and set-up from each project’s own repository; the verdict column is mine.
| Front end | Licence | Cost | Install | Users and roles | Document chat | Model back ends | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open WebUI | Open WebUI License: BSD-3 with a branding clause | Free to self-host; enterprise licence to remove branding past 50 users | One container | Users, groups, per-model access | Built in | Ollama, any OpenAI-compatible API | The pick for a small team |
| LibreChat | MIT | Free to self-host | Docker Compose with MongoDB and a search index | Users, OAuth and OIDC sign‑in | Through its RAG API service | Most hosted APIs; Ollama as a custom endpoint | Better if most models are paid APIs |
| AnythingLLM | MIT | Free to self-host | Desktop app, or one container for teams | Multi-user in the container build | The core of it: workspaces of documents | Ollama, LM Studio, hosted APIs | Best when the job is chat over documents |
Cost, licence and limits
- Cost
Nothing for the software. The bill is the GPU box and its power.
- Licence
BSD-3 terms plus a branding clause since 2025. Keep the name and logo unless you stay at 50 users or fewer, or buy the enterprise licence.
- Limits
Settings sprawl across admin pages, and PDF tables lose their shape in document chat.
- Skip it if
You need to ship it under your own brand to a large user base.