runtime · Timothy Jaeryang Baek — began Sept 2023 as "Ollama WebUI", renamed Open WebUI in Jan 2024 (Ollama raised a trademark concern); now community-maintained
Open WebUI
Open WebUI is the piece that makes a local model feel like a product instead of a curl command: a self-hosted, ChatGPT-style chat app your whole team logs into, with role-based access control and user groups so an admin can decide who sees which models. It talks to Ollama, LocalAI, vLLM, LM Studio, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint — so it sits on top of whatever engine your lab is running, unchanged. Beyond chat: Channels (shared, real-time spaces where people and models collaborate in one timeline), a Notes workspace, multi-model side-by-side conversations, and — on the Enterprise tier — LDAP/SSO/SCIM provisioning and usage-analytics dashboards. For a lab, it's the difference between 'ask Dave to SSH in and check the model' and everyone just opening a URL.
What it can help with
- self-hosted chat
- role-based access
- multi-user interface
- model integration
- rag support
- ldap sso
- usage analytics
- shared channels
- notes workspace