open-webui

How to Decide

Open‑webui is a free, open‑source, self‑hosted web UI that lets teams and individuals run LLM chat interfaces on their own hardware, with role‑based access control and document‑upload RAG support. The alternatives split into a few clear camps: dify leans on a visual drag‑and‑drop workflow builder with built‑in observability dashboards for production monitoring; AnythingLLM emphasizes a local‑first, highly customizable agent experience with extensive security controls and scalability features.

When comparing these options, focus on (1) deployment model – open‑webui and AnythingLLM are pure self‑hosted while dify also offers a SaaS cloud variant; (2) extensibility approach – open‑webui uses a plugin architecture, dify provides a visual workflow canvas, and AnythingLLM relies on code‑level customisation; (3) API availability – open‑webui and AnythingLLM expose APIs, whereas dify’s features are accessed mainly through its UI and REST endpoints without a dedicated public API; (4) RAG and document handling – open‑webui and dify include built‑in document ingestion pipelines, while AnythingLLM’s RAG capabilities are less explicitly described; (5) support and observability – dify offers built‑in usage dashboards and live‑chat support, whereas open‑webui and AnythingLLM rely on community channels.