Open-Source ChatGPT UI Alternative with Open WebUI

The success of ChatGPT has spawned a multitude of copycat projects. Some look to ride the large language model (LLM) hype without being sufficiently differentiated, but a handful of them genuinely extend the core capabilities with innovative and user-friendly features. In a previous post, I covered Chatbot UI, but there's also Next Chat and a bunch of other open-source alternatives. Today, we'll explore Open WebUI, and walk through self-hosting it easily on Railway.

What is Open WebUI?

Open WebUI (formerly Ollama WebUI) is a user-friendly, self-hosted web interface designed to operate entirely offline. It supports various LLM runners like Ollama and OpenAI-compatible APIs. Since launch, it has rapidly added a number of exciting features:

• Responsive web interface, works well on both desktop and mobile.
• Easy setup using Docker images, with a variety of themes available.
• Enhanced code readability with syntax highlighting feature.
• Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) support for document integration.
• Web browsing capability, prompt presets and conversation tagging.
• Multi-model, multi-modal support, with voice input.
• Chat management including sharing, collaboration, history and export.
• Many other features (see the Open WebUI documentation).

Deploy Open WebUI using One-Click Starter on Railway

We’ll self-host Open WebUI on Railway using a one-click template; the free trial is enough to try it. Launch the Open WebUI one-click starter template (or the button below) to deploy it.

We're using the open-webui:main image for deployment; review the default settings and click Deploy; the deployment will kick off immediately. The OLLAMA_BASE_URL variable has a placeholder value, and must be replaced with the actual URL where Ollama is installed, if you plan to use it. If you only plan to use OpenAI though, you can add an OPENAI_API_KEY variable or provide the API key from the web interface upon deployment.

The template attaches a persistent volume at /app/backend/data, so your chats, uploaded documents and accounts survive redeploys. Ollama isn’t bundled; if you want local models, deploy Ollama as a separate Railway service and point OLLAMA_BASE_URL at it.

Once the deployment completes, the Open WebUI sign in / sign up page will be available at a default xxx.up.railway.app domain - launch this URL to access the web interface. If you are interested in setting up a custom domain, I covered it at length in a previous post - see custom domains on Railway.

Create your admin account straight away. The first account registered on a fresh deployment gets admin rights, so sign up as soon as the URL is live, before anyone else finds it. After that, Open WebUI turns off open sign-ups, and any new accounts stay pending until you approve them in the Admin Panel.

Explore Open WebUI Interface

Once you create an account, you'll be redirected to the Open WebUI dashboard.

If you added the OpenAI API key during deployment, you should be able to use the interface immediately. If you didn't do so, click on the settings icon at the top-right corner, click Connections and provide the API key. You can also configure your Ollama base URL here.

Once the connections have been set up, the associated models will show up in the Select a model dropdown list. Pick one, say gpt-5.6-terra, and proceed.

You can use the interface in text completion or chat mode. You can also save the selected model as default for future queries.

As mentioned earlier, Open WebUI has an extensive set of features, well beyond the standard ChatGPT capabilities. Features like models, prompts and documents are beyond the scope of this post, but feel free to explore them on your own.

Frequently asked questions

Is Open WebUI free? Yes. Open WebUI is open-source and free to self-host; you only pay for hosting and for whatever model API you connect (OpenAI usage, for example).

Do I need Ollama to use Open WebUI? No. Ollama lets you run local models, but Open WebUI works with any OpenAI-compatible API, so you can point it straight at OpenAI and skip Ollama entirely.

Can I use it with my ChatGPT account? Not with a ChatGPT subscription directly — Open WebUI connects through an OpenAI API key, which is billed separately from ChatGPT Plus.