Open WebUI vs Onyx
Two of the top chat uis, side by side: score, setup, license, activity and what each review found.
Open WebUI
Self-hosted chat UI for Ollama and OpenAI-compatible APIs with RBAC and RAG
Onyx
Team knowledge chat that indexes 50+ apps for RAG and agents
| What we compare | Open WebUI | Onyx |
|---|---|---|
| Score parts, out of 100 | ||
| Adoption | 97, widely used | 58, popular |
| Freshness | 100, active | 100, active |
| Maintenance | 97, healthy | 83, healthy |
| Easy to run | 50, easy | 50, easy |
| Agent-ready | 0, none | 85, ready |
| Facts from GitHub and the README | ||
| Stars | 154.4k | 32.4k |
| License | custom license (read the license) | custom license (read the license) |
| Last commit | Oct 2026 | Oct 2026 |
| Last release | Oct 2026 | Oct 2026 |
| Language | Not stated | Not stated |
| Docker | Yes | Yes |
| GPU | Optional | Not needed |
| arm64 or Apple Silicon | Not stated | Mentioned |
Open WebUI
Open WebUI is a Python-served web interface (pip or Docker, port 8080) for Ollama and any OpenAI-compatible API such as LM Studio, vLLM, OpenRouter or Groq. It bundles RAG over 9 vector databases with hybrid BM25 search, web search through 20+ providers, image generation via ComfyUI, AUTOMATIC1111, DALL-E or Gemini, MCP and OpenAPI tool servers, and per-user roles with LDAP, OAuth and SCIM provisioning.
Who it is for: Teams and homelabs wanting a multi-user front end for local models
Strengths
- Images tagged :ollama and :cuda bundle Ollama or CUDA acceleration in one container
- RBAC, user groups, LDAP/AD, OAuth SSO and SCIM 2.0 provisioning built in
- 9 vector databases incl. ChromaDB, PGVector, Qdrant, Milvus and Elasticsearch
- Redis-backed sessions and WebSockets for multi-worker, multi-node deployments
Weaknesses
- Custom Open WebUI License requires keeping the Open WebUI branding visible
- Enterprise plan pitched at the top of the README; Terminals isolation is enterprise-only
- pip install is pinned to Python 3.11
- Data is lost unless the /app/backend/data volume is mounted
- GPU optional
- Docker + Compose
- Models: Ollama, OpenAI-compatible APIs, LM Studio, vLLM, OpenRouter
- port 8080
Onyx
Onyx indexes content and permissions from 50+ apps into a hybrid vector and keyword index, then answers through agentic RAG, deep research and custom agents with web search, MCP actions and a code sandbox. It works with Ollama, LiteLLM, vLLM, Anthropic, OpenAI or Gemini, deploys via Docker, Kubernetes or Helm, and is reachable from the web app, Slack and Discord bots, an MCP server or a Chrome extension.
Who it is for: Teams wanting an internal search and chat layer over company apps
Strengths
- Lite mode runs the chat UI and agents in under 1 GB of memory
- Air-gappable: index, database and processing all run inside your environment
- MCP server gives Claude Code, Codex or any MCP client company context with user permissions
- Community Edition is MIT; install script sets up Docker in one command
Weaknesses
- SSO (OIDC, SAML), SCIM, RBAC, analytics and whitelabeling are Enterprise Edition only
- Standard mode adds index, worker, inference, Redis and MinIO containers
- Lite mode cannot index documents
- README gives no port or hardware figures for the Standard deployment
- RAM ≥ 1 GB
- no GPU
- Compose
- Needs Redis (standard mode), MinIO (standard mode)
- Models: Ollama, LiteLLM, vLLM, Anthropic, OpenAI