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Updated 12 October 2026

Open WebUI vs LibreChat: what you take on when you self-host AI chat

Open WebUI and LibreChat are two widely used self-hosted chat interfaces for large language models. You run them on your own servers and point them at local models through Ollama or vLLM, or at the APIs of OpenAI and other providers. Getting either one running takes an afternoon. Keeping it running for a few hundred colleagues is a different job, and that job is what this page is about.

Everything about both projects below comes from their own repositories and documentation, checked on 12 October 2026.

Where the two projects differ

Feature lists for both are long and overlap heavily: chat with many models, document search, agents, MCP tools, web search, user groups. The differences that decide a rollout are fewer.

Licence and branding

LibreChat is MIT-licensed. Rename it, put your logo on it, ship it to the whole company.

Open WebUI changed course in April 2025. Code up to v0.6.5 is BSD-3 (the earliest code was MIT); from v0.6.6 the project uses its own Open WebUI License. It keeps the three BSD clauses and adds a fourth that prohibits "altering, removing, obscuring, or replacing any 'Open WebUI' branding". The exceptions are deployments with no more than 50 end users "within any rolling thirty (30) day period", prior written permission, or an enterprise licence. Open WebUI's licence page says plainly that this is not an OSI-approved open-source licence. If your plan was an intranet assistant with its own name for 800 people, budget for that enterprise licence or keep the Open WebUI name on screen.

Sign-in

Open WebUI documents OAuth and OpenID Connect, trusted-header authentication behind a proxy and LDAP/Active Directory, with SCIM 2.0 for provisioning. Its SSO documentation does not mention SAML. LibreChat accepts local email accounts and passkeys, LDAP, OAuth and OpenID Connect, as well as SAML, though its SAML page notes that "Single Logout (SLO) is not supported" and only one of SAML or OIDC can be active at a time. If your identity provider is SAML-only, that alone may settle it.

What you actually deploy

Open WebUI can start as a single container with SQLite, and moves to PostgreSQL as it grows. LibreChat's standard docker-compose.yml brings up six services: the app, its admin panel, MongoDB, Meilisearch, a pgvector database and a separate RAG API. Its browser-based admin panel for managing users and roles is marked "Preview" in the documentation.

Models

Open WebUI speaks Ollama and any OpenAI-compatible API. LibreChat lists OpenAI, Azure, Anthropic, AWS Bedrock as well as Google with Vertex AI natively, plus custom OpenAI-compatible endpoints and Ollama. Through a gateway such as LiteLLM or OpenRouter, both reach roughly the same model catalogue.

The work that starts after installation

Release cadence first. Open WebUI shipped nine releases between 29 June (v0.10.0) and 10 October 2026 (v0.12.0). LibreChat's v0.8.8 arrived on 1 October after four release candidates. Someone on your team reads those release notes, backs up the database, tests the migration on staging and then upgrades production. If nobody owns that, the instance quietly freezes on the version it launched with.

Then the models. Self-hosted models mean GPUs, drivers, an inference server and an on-call rota for when it stops answering. API models mean keys stored in environment variables or the app database; Open WebUI's own docs advise against putting management or master keys behind general user traffic. Who rotates them, and who reads the invoices?

Logging needs a decision before the first user signs in. Two defaults in Open WebUI's env.py are worth knowing:

ENABLE_ADMIN_CHAT_ACCESS = True # admins can read users' chats AUDIT_LOG_LEVEL = NONE # options: METADATA | REQUEST | REQUEST_RESPONSE

Admins can therefore open other people's conversations unless you switch that off, and there is no audit trail until you turn one on (chat paths are excluded from it by default). In Germany, a tool that lets managers read staff conversations falls under the works council's co-determination right in section 87(1) no. 6 of the Works Constitution Act. Other countries have their own consultation rules for workplace monitoring, so ask HR early.

Personal data is the last piece. Neither project masks names or account numbers out of the box before a prompt goes to an external model. Open WebUI points to filter functions you write or pull from its community. LibreChat has opt-in pattern filters that block or log a match; its documentation says audit mode "does not provide redaction", and the bundled starter patterns target API keys and bearer tokens.

None of this changes your GDPR paperwork, which is the same whichever interface you choose: a record of processing (Art. 30), security measures (Art. 32), a data protection impact assessment where the risk calls for one (Art. 35), and a processor agreement (Art. 28) with every API provider whose models you connect. Open WebUI's enterprise page puts it in one line: "Compliance responsibility sits with the deploying organization."

Self-hosting is the better call when

Your situation Why self-hosting wins
You already run GPU servers and a container platform The marginal effort is small and you keep full control
You need an air-gapped installation Open WebUI documents air-gapped deployments, and both work with local models via Ollama
Developers want to modify the code or write plugins Source code is open, and both support plugins and MCP tools
A small technical team is experimenting Under 50 users, Open WebUI's branding clause does not bite; LibreChat's MIT licence never does

A managed workspace fits better when

It fits when the people asking for AI sit in finance or HR, and IT has no appetite for another platform to patch.

Myra AI Workspace covers chat, projects with knowledge (including OCR for scans), agents, and workflows with human approval steps. Sign-in runs through SSO with OIDC or SAML, and users can be provisioned via SCIM. It runs on Myra infrastructure with a BSI C5 Type 2 attestation; the attestation covers the infrastructure, not the application itself.

The privacy questions above have answers built in. Personal data is replaced with placeholders before it reaches an external model and restored in the answer, in every plan. A coloured indicator next to the model picker shows what will happen before a message is sent: green for a Myra-hosted model, amber when an external model answers with masking on, red when an external model gets the text unmasked. Myra models run on Myra's own EU infrastructure; on paid self-service plans they need the "EU-Gov" add-on. A project can be set to "Local only", which blocks cloud models, web search and external tools for that project. EU-only routing can be switched on, and it is off by default.

On logging, here is what Myra does. Admin changes and security events are logged, tamper-evident via a hash chain on request; customer admins have no audit-log view of their own. The request log stores prompts and responses by default, and ghost mode keeps a conversation out of storage and logs entirely. Myra does not use customer data to train AI models. If the cloud is ruled out, Myra AI Workspace is available on-premises on request, and at contract end you get all data back in open formats.

The trade-off is real. You do not get the source code, you cannot install arbitrary community plugins, and the interface is available in German and English only.

Further reading: Myra AI Workspace, LiteLLM alternative and the German version of this page, Open WebUI und LibreChat.

All statements about Open WebUI and LibreChat come from the projects' own repositories and documentation (see Sources), as of 12 October 2026. Open WebUI and LibreChat are trademarks of their respective owners. Myra Security has no affiliation with either project.

Frequently asked questions

Is LibreChat or Open WebUI better?

Neither wins across the board. Open WebUI is quicker to start (one container, SQLite) and ships RAG and SCIM provisioning in the main application. LibreChat supports SAML and more cloud providers natively and is MIT-licensed, so you can rebrand it freely. Its standard Docker setup runs six services, including MongoDB. Pick the one whose identity provider support and licence fit your rollout, then test it with real users.

Can I use Open WebUI commercially?

Yes. The Open WebUI License permits use and modification. The catch is clause 4: once more than 50 end users have access within a rolling 30-day period, you may not remove or replace the Open WebUI branding unless you have written permission or an enterprise licence. Open WebUI's own licence page says the licence is not OSI-approved.

What is a managed alternative to Open WebUI?

A hosted workspace where the vendor runs the application and patches it, and runs at least some of the models too. Myra AI Workspace is one option. It combines chat and agents with SSO via OIDC or SAML plus masking of personal data before external models, running on Myra infrastructure with a BSI C5 Type 2 attestation. It is also available on-premises on request. You give up access to the source code and arbitrary plugins.

Sources

This guide reflects the projects' public repositories and documentation as of October 2026. It is not legal advice. Ask your data protection officer or counsel how the rules apply to your organisation.