SHSelfHostIndex

LobeChat vs Open WebUI

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted ai chat uis options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
LO LobeChat Modern AI chat framework with plugins and multimodality VS OP Open WebUI Feature-rich self-hosted web interface for local LLMs
FeatureLobeChatOpen WebUI
CategoryAI Chat UIsAI Chat UIs
LicenseApache-2.0BSD-3-Clause
LanguageTypeScriptPython
Setup difficultyEasyEasy
Min. RAM2,048 MB2,048 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metaldocker, kubernetes, helm
GitHub stars★ 81,406★ 148,193
First released20232023
ReplacesChatGPTChatGPT, Poe

Why pick each one

Choose LobeChat if…

  • Released under the Apache-2.0 license
  • Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Mature project with 81.4k GitHub stars
LobeChat details

Choose Open WebUI if…

  • Very active development
  • Works with many backends
Open WebUI details

Frequently asked questions

Is LobeChat or Open WebUI better?

Neither is universally better. Open WebUI has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are LobeChat and Open WebUI free and open-source?

Yes. LobeChat is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Open WebUI under BSD-3-Clause. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run LobeChat and Open WebUI with Docker?

LobeChat: yes. Open WebUI: yes.

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