Open WebUI
Open WebUI builds a self-hosted AI platform so people and organizations can run AI on their own terms, connecting local or cloud models while keeping control of models, data, and infrastructure. Its stated mission is to let everyone run, own, and adapt AI rather than rent it or depend on a single provider.
At a Glance
- Individuals and self-hosting enthusiasts
- Startups and businesses
- Large enterprises and IT teams
- Regulated organizations requiring on-premises or air-gapped deployment
- +2 more
AI Tools by Open WebUI
(2)
Open Terminal
Self Hosted Remote Shell for AI
Open WebUI
Self Hosted AI Platform
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Latest News
Open WebUI announced as an early-access partner for NVIDIA RTX Spark, highlighting local-model agents that can work with files, tools, and infrastructure under the user's control.
Open WebUI v0.12.1 added channel apps, avatars in standard calls, Azure OpenAI for realtime calls, revision comparison, muted channels, .skill files, and fixes following v0.12.0.
Open WebUI v0.12.0 introduced realtime voice calls, animated 3D avatars, MFA, nested groups, a Thinking slider, shared-chat replies, and version history for models, tools, and skills.
Open WebUI v0.11.1 added tool-call approvals, ask_user, an in-place terminal file browser, smarter chat search, admin interface defaults, and delta streaming.
Products & Services
Self-hosted AI interface and platform for local or cloud models, available through pip, Docker, Kubernetes, and a desktop app.
A computer that can be curled: a self-hosted terminal and filesystem environment that gives Open WebUI agents the ability to inspect files, write and run code, analyze data, fix errors, and produce files in chat. The project is distributed through pip and is maintained in the open-webui GitHub organization under an MIT license.
Enterprise companion to Open Terminal providing per-user isolated environments, resource limits, separate credentials, network rules, and automatic lifecycle management on Docker or Kubernetes.
Optional enterprise/proprietary licensing and support for white-labeling, custom branding, tailored features, dedicated support, and enterprise-exclusive offerings. Standard use with original branding remains free.
Market Position
Open WebUI positions itself as a vendor-neutral, self-hosted interface and control plane for local and cloud AI, emphasizing data ownership, extensibility, and enterprise governance rather than owning a proprietary frontier model. Its own alternatives guide places it alongside LibreChat as a self-hosted multi-provider chat interface, AnythingLLM for document Q&A, Dify for visual workflows, LM Studio and Jan for desktop local AI, and commercial assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. Its differentiation is the combination of broad provider compatibility, self-hosting, offline/on-premises operation, a large community ecosystem, and enterprise controls.
Leadership
Founders
Tim J. Baek (Timothy Jaeryang Baek)
Creator and founder of Open WebUI. Mozilla Builders describes him as a computer-science graduate with First-Class Honors from the University of London and a master's degree in computer science from Simon Fraser University. He is also identified as the founder on Open WebUI's team page and LinkedIn profile.
Executive Team
Tim J. Baek (Timothy Jaeryang Baek)
Founder and creator
Founded and leads Open WebUI; he created the original Ollama WebUI project. His reported academic background is computer science at the University of London and Simon Fraser University.
Founding Story
Tim J. Baek began the project in October 2023 as Ollama WebUI, initially providing a user-friendly web interface for Ollama. As the project expanded to support additional model providers and APIs, it was renamed Open WebUI in early 2024. The initial and continuing vision is a capable, extensible AI interface that users can self-host and control.
Business Model
Revenue Model
The community edition is free for unlimited users and can be self-hosted. Open WebUI says ongoing development is funded by optional GitHub sponsorships and enterprise/proprietary licenses; enterprise licenses monetize white-labeling, custom branding, dedicated support, tailored features, and enterprise offerings such as Terminals.
Pricing Tiers
Free to use and deploy with the original Open WebUI branding intact.
Optional sponsorship tier.
Optional sponsorship tiers listed on Open WebUI's GitHub Sponsors page.
Required for white-labeling, rebranding, modifications to original branding, and enterprise-exclusive offerings; public enterprise pricing is not listed.
Target Markets
- Individuals and self-hosting enthusiasts
- Startups and businesses
- Large enterprises and IT teams
- Regulated organizations requiring on-premises or air-gapped deployment
- Government, defense, healthcare, finance, legal, and education organizations
- Developers building local-model and multi-provider AI applications
- Private personal AI and local-model experimentation
- Enterprise internal AI assistants and multi-department deployments
- Regulated, sovereign, on-premises, and air-gapped AI deployments
- Document question answering, retrieval, and knowledge-base chat
- Coding, data analysis, file manipulation, and agentic workflows
- Education and research
- Astellas Pharma Inc.: 3,000+ employees using a secure Azure deployment to create and share 420+ custom AI models; the case study reports 68% significant efficiency gains and a +43 NPS.
- Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz: an open-source stack including Open WebUI serving 30,000+ students and 5,000+ employees.