NextChat vs Open WebUI

Last reviewed Aug 26, 2026 · 617 words

The RAM figures give the game away: NextChat idles happily in 512 MB because it's a thin client for other people's model APIs, while Open WebUI asks for 2 GB because it's a whole AI workspace — accounts, document storage, RAG indexing, plugins. Both replace the ChatGPT interface, both are Easy-rated deploys, and 88,653 versus 149,927 stars says the community rates both highly. But one is a window and the other is a building, so the comparison mostly resolves to how much building you want.

NextChat: bring keys, get apps everywhere

NextChat (MIT, TypeScript, formerly ChatGPT-Next-Web) assumes you hold API keys for providers — OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and other compatible endpoints — and gives you one fast interface over all of them, with prompt templates and per-conversation model switching. Its distinguishing feature is reach: alongside Docker it offers a one-click Vercel deploy and genuine desktop and mobile builds, so the same assistant follows you across devices without a browser tab. The trade-offs are structural, not bugs: it's single-user by design, and without provider keys it does nothing. Pay-per-token pricing means a light chat habit often costs less than the electricity for local inference, which is an unfashionable but true argument for this architecture.

Open WebUI: the front end that grew into a platform

Open WebUI (BSD-3-Clause, Python) started as an Ollama UI and became the default self-hosted chat platform: multi-user with role-based access, chat history, RAG over uploaded documents, web search, model management, and a pipelines system for custom plugins. It speaks to Ollama and to any OpenAI-compatible API, so it happily fronts local and cloud models in the same picker. It's offline-capable, development is very active, and the catalogue's one listed con is fair — the feature set can feel overwhelming when all you wanted was a chat box. Weekly releases also mean the UI you learn this month gets rearranged next month.

Deployment notes worth knowing upfront

Open WebUI runs from ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:main on port 8080 with a volume at /app/backend/data; the first account you create becomes the admin, so register before you share the URL. If Ollama runs on the host rather than in compose, add --add-host=host.docker.internal:host-gateway and point OLLAMA_BASE_URL at it — this is the number-one "no models found" cause. NextChat's Docker setup is comparably simple (an API key and optional access password as environment variables), and the Vercel path means you can run it without owning a server at all — though then you're self-hosting in name only.

Decision table

What I'd do

For almost everyone reading a self-hosting site, Open WebUI next to Ollama is the answer — it's the pairing the whole chat UI category gets measured against, and the multi-user and RAG features are the ones you grow into rather than out of. I'd reach for NextChat in one specific situation: no local models, a couple of paid API keys, and a wish for a private, fast chat app on desktop and phone. That user gets more from NextChat's 512 MB than from Open WebUI's platform, and nothing stops you running both against the same keys to check.