#2020th of 28 in Chat UIs
better-chatbot
Self-hosted chat UI with agents, MCP tools, workflows and pgvector document search
- Stars
- 1.2k
- License
- MIT
- Last commit
- Nov 2026
- Last release
- Nov 2026
- Language
- TypeScript
1,050 on 21 Apr 20261,197 on 10 Nov 2026
From GitHub's daily star counts.
Checked on GitHub.
Overview
keinsaas Navigator Community Edition (formerly better-chatbot) is a Next.js chat and agent app backed by Postgres with pgvector. It supports @-mentioned agents, skills, a visual workflow builder, MCP servers over HTTP or stdio, scheduled tasks and project document retrieval. Models go through the Vercel AI Gateway by default, or through Ollama, LM Studio and other OpenAI-compatible endpoints.
Who it is for: Self-hosters wanting a multi-model chat UI with agents and MCP tools
Strengths
- Project documents are chunked, embedded and searched in Postgres with pgvector, no external service
- Connects Ollama, LM Studio or any OpenAI-compatible server per account
- Visual workflow editor publishes workflows as tools callable from chat
- MIT licensed with no usage caps or telemetry stated for this edition
Weaknesses
- Default model access needs a Vercel AI Gateway key; per-provider keys were removed in 2.0
- Team workspaces, per-member budgets, billing and Slack bot are only in the hosted edition
- Upgrade from 1.x is a one-way migration; backup is required
What it needs
- no GPU
- Docker + Compose
- Needs Postgres with pgvector, Vercel AI Gateway (AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY), Supabase (file uploads, optional), Redis (optional), Inngest (optional), E2B (optional), Exa (optional), AssemblyAI (optional), Composio (optional)
- Models: Vercel AI Gateway (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Mistral, xAI, DeepSeek, Moonshot), Ollama, LM Studio, OpenAI-compatible endpoints, TensorX
- port 3000
What changed
“the repository is a monorepo and the app lives in apps/web. Models are served through the Vercel AI Gateway: one AIGATEWAYAPIKEY, or none on Vercel, replaces the per-provider keys. Archives become pr…”
GHSA-7JVQ-8FRJ-XGFC. “Manual tool mode now also asks before built-in tools (web search, HTTP, code) run; in 1.x they ran without confirmation. See the security advisory. Thanks to Kaan Gökçek (@kaaan11) for the report.”
From the release notes. No flag means the note does not say so, not that the upgrade is safe.
Also in Chat UIs
See all 28| Rank | Project | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Open WebUISelf-hosted web UI for Ollama and OpenAI-compatible models with users and RAG | 89 out of 100 |
| 2 | LobeHubMulti-agent chat workspace connected to team IM apps and 40+ model providers | 87 out of 100 |
| 3 | OnyxTeam knowledge search and chat that indexes 50+ connected apps with permissions | 87 out of 100 |
| #4 | AnythingLLMDocument chat app with agents, workspaces and many LLM and vector DB backends | 85 out of 100 |
| #5 | LibreChatSelf-hosted multi-provider chat UI with agents, MCP tools and multi-user auth | 84 out of 100 |