Open WebUI pricing, free plan and limits

Last updated: 2026-10-06

Open WebUI is a free, self-hosted chat interface for Ollama and OpenAI-compatible models, with about 154,000 GitHub stars on 2026-10-06. Its latest release, v0.11.4, shipped on 2026-09-21. It adds document retrieval, user roles, plugins and MCP tool servers, and installs with pip or Docker.

About Open WebUI

Open WebUI is a self-hosted web interface for talking to language models, built by Timothy Jaeryang Baek and published at github.com/open-webui/open-webui. On 2026-10-06 the repository showed about 154,000 stars and 22,500 forks, and the vendor's site reports 407M+ downloads and 507K+ community members. You install it on your own machine or server, open it in a browser and point it at the models you want to use.

It does not run models itself. Instead it connects to Ollama and to any OpenAI-compatible API, and the README names LM Studio, GroqCloud, Mistral, OpenRouter and vLLM as examples. That makes it a front end rather than a runner: the typical local stack pairs Ollama as the engine with Open WebUI as the chat window. If you want a runner that bundles its own chat screen, LM Studio, Jan and GPT4All each ship a desktop app, and Open WebUI can also talk to hosted services such as OpenRouter or models from OpenAI and Anthropic.

What sets it apart from a plain chat box is the platform around the conversation. Administrators define roles, groups and permissions, so a team can share one deployment. Models can be wrapped with custom instructions, tools and knowledge to make specialised agents. Retrieval over uploaded documents, web search, voice and video calls, notes, channels, a calendar and scheduled prompts are all listed in the README. Plugins come as Filters, Actions, Pipes, Tools and Skills, and external services connect through MCP, MCPO and OpenAPI tool servers. An optional Open Terminal gives an agent a filesystem and shell for multi-step work.

Setup is a single command: pip install open-webui, or a Docker image, with Kubernetes manifests and Helm available for larger installs. The software is free to run. The licence is its own BSD-style Open WebUI License, not an OSI-approved one, and it forbids removing or replacing the Open WebUI branding once a deployment passes 50 end users in 30 days unless you hold written permission or an enterprise licence. An Enterprise plan with SSO, audit logs and air-gapped deployment is sold through the vendor's sales team, with no public price. The latest tagged release on 2026-10-06 was v0.11.4, published 2026-09-21.

Screenshots

Pricing

No charge for the self-hosted software when checked in October 2026. The Enterprise tier is quoted by the vendor sales team and has no published price. Your running costs are your own server and any paid model APIs you connect.

Key Features

• Ollama and OpenAI-compatible connections: Connects to local Ollama models and to any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, so one window can switch between a laptop model and a hosted one.
• Retrieval over your documents: Uploads and knowledge collections let a model answer from your own files, with web search available as another source.
• Roles, groups and permissions: Administrators set per-user and per-group access to models, tools and knowledge, which is what lets a team share one install.
• Plugin system with MCP support: Filters, Actions, Pipes, Tools and Skills extend the app, and MCP, MCPO and OpenAPI tool servers connect outside services.
• Custom models and agents: Wrap a base model with instructions, tools and knowledge, and share the preset with specific users or groups.
• Voice and video calls: Hands-free calls support several speech-to-text providers, including local Whisper, OpenAI, Deepgram and Azure.

Pros

• Free to self-host, with a single pip install or Docker image getting a working chat interface running in about 60 seconds by the vendor's own count.
• Works with Ollama and any OpenAI-compatible API, so you can keep local models and hosted models in the same window instead of juggling two apps.
• Multi-user features such as roles, groups and per-model access let a small team share one deployment, which desktop runners like GPT4All and Jan do not offer.
• Very active project: new tagged releases arrive every few weeks and about 154,000 GitHub stars back it.

Cons

• It is only an interface. You still need Ollama, a hosted API or another model server running behind it, so setup takes two steps rather than one.
• The licence is custom, not OSI-approved, and it bars removing Open WebUI branding past 50 end users in 30 days without permission.
• Self-hosting means you handle updates, backups and security patches, and the project ships frequent 0.x releases that can change behaviour.
• No compliance attestations such as SOC 2 are listed on the pages we checked, so regulated teams need to ask about the Enterprise plan.

Visit Open WebUI Official Website