# LobeChat vs Open WebUI

LobeChat records 11,369 monthly visits with -1.5% month-over-month growth and Freemium, Free pricing. Open WebUI records 804,534 monthly visits with -2.8% growth and Freemium pricing.

| Metric | [LobeChat](https://openaitools.app/tool/lobechat) | [Open WebUI](https://openaitools.app/tool/open-webui) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| Website URL | https://lobechat.com | https://openwebui.com |
| Categories | AI Productivity Tools, AI Chatbot, Large Language Models (LLMs) | Large Language Models (LLMs), AI Chatbot, Open Source AI Models, AI Developer Tools |
| Pricing Model | Freemium, Free | Freemium |
| Monthly Visits | 11,369 | 804,534 |
| MoM Growth Rate | -1.5% | -2.8% |
| Primary Market | Russia | United States |
| Direct Visits | 4,652 | 299,835 |
| Review Score | 4.7 | 4.4 |
| Saved Count | 0 | 0 |
| Supported Platforms | Website | Website |

## LobeChat

LobeChat started as an open-source chat UI for language models and has grown into a full assistant workspace now branded LobeHub. The interface supports OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, Mistral, DeepSeek, Qwen, Groq, Ollama and other providers, and you can switch between them mid-conversation or run local models through Ollama. Conversations are organised into assistants and topics, with prompt libraries, branch-and-edit message trees, vision input for image understanding and function calling for tools.

The product layer around the chat is what distinguishes it: an assistant marketplace for discovering and sharing agents, a knowledge base that uploads documents and grounds answers in your own files, and a plugin system that lets assistants search the web, generate images, read PDFs or call external APIs. Artifacts render generated code and documents in a live canvas, and text-to-speech adds voice playback. Because it is open source, every part of the experience — including the model gateway and data storage — can be deployed on your own infrastructure.

LobeChat is used as both a free personal assistant and a team tool. Individual users get a capable daily chat client without vendor lock-in, while organisations that care about data residency can self-host the whole stack and point it at internal or Azure OpenAI endpoints.

**Pricing & Plans:** Freemium. The open-source client is free to use and self-host at no licence cost; a hosted cloud plan adds convenience, higher limits and team features, with paid tiers on top of the free allowance.

- **Multi-model gateway:** Talk to OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, Mistral, DeepSeek, Qwen, Groq and local Ollama models from one interface, switching providers within a single conversation.
- **Assistant marketplace:** Discover, clone and share agents with predefined prompts, tools and knowledge, so you are not building every workflow from scratch.
- **Knowledge base with RAG:** Upload documents and files so answers are grounded in your own content rather than the model's general memory.
- **Plugins and artifacts:** Extend assistants with web search, image generation and API calls, and render generated code or documents in a live canvas.
- **Self-hosting and data control:** Deploy the open-source stack on your own servers or Vercel, keeping conversations, keys and files under your control.

**Strengths:** Genuinely open source, so no vendor lock-in and full self-hosting is possible; Supports an unusually wide range of hosted and local models; Rich feature set: marketplace, knowledge base, plugins, artifacts and voice; Generous free tier for personal use plus a hosted option for convenience

**Limitations:** Feature breadth means a busier interface than minimalist chat apps, with a learning curve; Self-hosting requires technical setup and ongoing maintenance; Some advanced capabilities depend on the specific model or plugin you connect

[Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/lobechat.md)

## Open WebUI

Open WebUI is an open-source, self-hosted interface for working with AI models. Instead of renting access to a single vendor's chatbot, you run the interface on your own hardware or cloud tenancy, then connect whatever models you want: local runtimes such as Ollama, OpenAI-compatible endpoints, Anthropic, or a mix of local and remote. Everything a team produces — conversations, prompts, models, skills and tools — stays in an environment you administer.

The platform has grown well beyond a chat window. Retrieval-augmented generation, web search, document understanding, voice input and output, and vision are built in, and Python tools, functions and pipelines let developers script custom behaviour and share it. On the operations side it offers enterprise features such as SSO, role-based access control, audit logs, data residency options, and on-premises, hybrid or fully air-gapped deployment for regulated environments. White-labeling and custom branding are also available for organizations that want their own look.

Open WebUI is distributed free of charge under an open-source license and can be installed with a single pip or Docker command, with no account required to get running. A separate enterprise offering is available for organizations that want commercial support, compliance guarantees and managed rollout help, which is quoted on contact. A large community maintains a public hub of prompts, models, tools and functions, so much of what teams need is already shared and ready to install.

**Pricing & Plans:** The core platform is free and open source, installable via pip or Docker with no account required. An enterprise tier with support, compliance and deployment assistance is quoted on contact.

- **Any Model, Any Endpoint:** Connect local runtimes like Ollama alongside OpenAI-compatible and Anthropic APIs, and switch between them inside one interface.
- **Retrieval and Search Built In:** RAG over your own documents, web search and citation-aware answers come standard, so responses are grounded in real sources.
- **Python Tools, Functions and Pipelines:** Extend the platform with Python code to add custom tooling, preprocessing, and multi-step pipelines, then share them with others.
- **Enterprise Controls:** SSO, RBAC, audit logs, data residency, and on-premises, hybrid or air-gapped deployment for organisations with strict requirements.
- **Community Hub:** Browse and install prompts, models, skills and tools contributed by hundreds of thousands of community members.

**Strengths:** Free and open source with no account needed to install; Works with local and cloud models through a single interface; Strong privacy posture: your data and models stay on your infrastructure; Extensive enterprise features including SSO, RBAC and audit logs

**Limitations:** Self-hosting requires you to handle servers, updates and backups; Some enterprise capabilities and support sit behind a paid, quote-based tier; Feature depth means a learning curve for non-technical administrators; Local model performance depends heavily on your own hardware

[Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/open-webui.md)

## Frequently Asked Questions

### How do LobeChat and Open WebUI compare in monthly traffic?

LobeChat has 11,369 monthly visits, while Open WebUI has 804,534. Traffic estimates describe audience size, not product quality.

### How do their growth rates compare?

LobeChat has a month-over-month growth rate of -1.5%; Open WebUI has -2.8%.

### How does pricing compare?

LobeChat: Freemium, Free. Freemium. The open-source client is free to use and self-host at no licence cost; a hosted cloud plan adds convenience, higher limits and team features, with paid tiers on top of the free allowance. Open WebUI: Freemium. The core platform is free and open source, installable via pip or Docker with no account required. An enterprise tier with support, compliance and deployment assistance is quoted on contact.

## Alternatives

| # | Tool Name | Monthly Visits | MoM Growth Rate | Pricing Model | Summary | Profile (Markdown) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| 1 | [DeepSeek](https://openaitools.app/tool/deepseek) | 372,761,591 | +4.3% | Freemium | High-efficiency open-weight and hosted reasoning AI powered by DeepSeek-V4 and R1 at ultra-low token costs. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/deepseek.md) |
| 2 | [Kimi AI](https://openaitools.app/tool/kimi-chat) | 19,632,261 | -23.4% | Free | Moonshot AI's long-context assistant for research, coding, and agentic work | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/kimi-chat.md) |
| 3 | [Ollama](https://openaitools.app/tool/ollama) | 9,421,973 | +4.3% | Free, Freemium, Paid | Functions primarily as a lightweight CLI runtime for local models rather than a full-featured chat interface. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/ollama.md) |
| 4 | [Poe](https://openaitools.app/tool/poe) | 5,894,702 | +9.1% | Freemium | One app to chat with GPT, Claude, Gemini and hundreds of other AI models | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/poe.md) |
| 5 | [n8n](https://openaitools.app/tool/n8n) | 4,522,449 | -7.4% | Freemium | Open-source workflow automation built for AI agents and technical teams | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/n8n.md) |
| 6 | [Hermes-Agent](https://openaitools.app/tool/hermes-agent-1) | 3,638,741 | -5.4% | Freemium | A free, open-source personal AI agent that learns your projects and works across every messaging app. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/hermes-agent-1.md) |
| 7 | [Chatbot App](https://openaitools.app/tool/chatbot-app) | 2,170,883 | -9.7% | Freemium | Chat with 30+ leading AI models in one clean, fast workspace | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/chatbot-app.md) |
| 8 | [Clawdbot (OpenClaw)](https://openaitools.app/tool/clawdbot) | 1,903,068 | -25.4% | Paid, Free | Open-source personal AI assistant that runs on your own machine and works from chat apps | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/clawdbot.md) |
| 9 | [Dify](https://openaitools.app/tool/dify-ai) | 819,691 | -15% | Freemium | Specializes in visual workflow building and RAG pipelines rather than serving purely as a chat interface. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/dify-ai.md) |
| 10 | [LobeHub](https://openaitools.app/tool/lobehub) | 654,548 | -25% | Freemium | Focuses on collaborative team AI workspaces and plugins, but shares similar open-source architectural goals. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/lobehub.md) |

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Source: https://openaitools.app/compare/lobechat-vs-open-webui

More Markdown: [Categories](https://openaitools.app/categories.md) · [Traffic rankings](https://openaitools.app/rankings.md) · [llms.txt](https://openaitools.app/llms.txt)