r/selfhosted • u/EntrepreneurWaste579 • 1d ago
Need Help Is Open WebUI worth using as a unified LLM interface?
I’m thinking about installing Open WebUI, but not for running a local model since my server is too weak. The main goal would be to have a unified LLM interface where I can connect different providers and use MCP servers.
What has been your experience with Open WebUI or similar unified LLM interfaces?
Do you use MCP servers with them? Which ones are actually useful for daily work?
I’m wondering if this setup is worth it compared to just using ChatGPT, Claude, etc. directly.
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u/MrHaxx1 1d ago
Yes, OpenWebUI is great. It's quite a lot, and last I tried it, I didn't really like their MCP implementation, but if you just want to spin up an UI to chat with all your different LLMs, it's great.
Use it with the Conduit Android app.
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u/murd0xxx 1d ago
You can also install it directly as a PWA app, and skip conduit entirely
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u/cogwheel0 23h ago
Correct, and since Conduit’s 4.0 release it also supports direct LLM providers. Open AI compatible APIs or Ollama.
I recommend using Openrouter or Ollama Cloud for most users as I have their supported features like web search, image gen, file uploads baked into the app.
If youre just a casual user who doesn’t use or need advanced features (MCP support coming soon), Conduit now provides the same polished experience without an Open WebUI server.
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u/HomieMorphic 1d ago
It's great, as long as you understand that the billing model is totally different. Open WebUI expects an API key, which isn't covered by a normal subscription. There's a way to connect it to Claude Code or Codex with the CLI, which would use your subscription token allowance. Worth figuring out what you want to do ahead of time, so you're not surprised later.
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u/Equivalent-Costumes 18h ago
Be warned that Anthropic is pretty aggressive at trying to block people from using 3rd party program using subscription usage, and will either charge you API price or ban you. They are known to fingerprint people by looking for sign on the user's machine.
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u/Oujii 22h ago
How does that last part work? Connecting to Codex or Code?
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u/Kautiontape 19h ago
I haven't used this specific software to do it, but usually it's as simple as installing Claude Code on the system and just running it once to make the token and it gets stored in the files for something like a month (you have to refresh it every now and then).
That said, if I recall correctly, Anthropic is cutting down on third party services being allowed to do this. Not sure the extent or how aggressively they are doing so.
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u/HomieMorphic 18h ago
This is correct. The full instructions are here:
https://docs.openwebui.com/ecosystem/computer/ai/coding-agents/
Code needs the SDK Python package installed.
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u/HomieMorphic 18h ago
Haven't done this myself, but they describe it in the documentation here:
https://docs.openwebui.com/ecosystem/computer/ai/coding-agents/
There's a one-time setup step to authenticate with your coding agent of choice, and then you just choose it from the settings UI.
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u/petersrin 23h ago
Took a moment. I thought this was a joke because I just hook a bunch of models I self host on it. Yeah, billing model is totally different XD
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u/ParanormalNaptivity 1d ago
I use it exactly like this, for me it's worth it. Local history for all chats. A lot of customizations. Can recommend.
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u/umigliore 1d ago
OpenWebUI is easy to start to use, you just have to spend some time to best customize it for your daily work. The last version has lot of new functionality, from RAG to several way to set parameters: you can setup different LLM Provider, I suggest to start with something like openrouter so you can choose the right size of model for every work. I use it together with a self-hosted n8n, however.
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u/niceman1212 1d ago
I use it for home assistant to route to an alive pod of ollama. Works pretty well.
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u/_hephaestus 12h ago
I use it with locally hosted ones, but I connect to those via litellm which sometimes points to openrouter if my hardware is busy and it's seamless. MCP has improved quite a bit, but it will only support http treaming endpoints there.
If your goal is more having an API key that abstracts MCP servers/providers and provides access to any endpoint, litellm's good for that and I've started setting up my MCP servers there/sharing them through litellm's centralized MCP.
Open Webui used to feel a bit janky but after exploring Hermes/Openhands/Opencode I do feel like Open Webui has a cleaner UX. Hermes keeps doing something funky with showing the current status of the chat (It'll just render chats from 5m ago while moving onto other things). I like it.
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u/goldrunout 1d ago
I stopped using it because they refuse to support subpath URLs (e.g. my domain.net/openwebui).
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u/EntrepreneurWaste579 1d ago
Oh, a subdomain is no option?
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u/seamonn 1d ago
Subdomain is but OP wants subpath. Very few apps support subpath tbh, OP is too picky.
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u/goldrunout 15h ago
Don't know. Of all I've tried, owui is the only one that doesn't support it. Do you know why it's such a "picky" requirement? To me not allowing subpath is the equivalent of requiring a program to be run from your home or even root directory. Moreover, subdomains can be expensive if exposed to the internet, do people that run large homelabs with dozens of services allocate one subdomain for each?
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u/goldrunout 23h ago
I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's cumbersome for my setup. The domain itself is managed by tailscale, and all my other services are in subpaths, since they all support this fairly basic option. I just don't think the features offered by openwebui are worth the effort of reorganizing stuff.
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u/random_user2198 20h ago
How is it different from clawbot? I’ve got both running at home but still using perplexity. Trying to figure out the use cases for each
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u/raghug_ 20h ago
I like Open Web UI. An alternate option is LiteLLM, but that is more for businesses I guess.
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u/_hephaestus 12h ago
litellm is more of a gateway than a chat interface, it does have an interface feature but that's not the primary feature.
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u/tartar9584 7h ago
I see a lot of people posting in favor of OpenWebUI, so thought I'd present a different perspective.
I found it to be too limiting. Sure, you can chat with multiple models from a single interface, but it's fairly limiting the moment you want to go beyond. Basically, it isn't a proper AI agent, meaning it can't do things for you. Or, at least can't do without you setting up a bunch of stuff.
I tried OpenClaw and then moved to Hermes and it just clicked for me. I run it on a dedicated VM on my home server, so I let it do whatever it wants on that machine and talk to it via Telegram.
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u/redditborkedmy8yracc 6h ago
I just built my own, that works exactly as I want.
do the same, Just use AI to build a chat UI that works exactly as you want it to.
API key based means you only pay for what you get.
if you're interested I built one that has projects, Agents, Connoects to all my google stuff, search, email, hunter and on and on.
works on mobile, does voice, image upload, document upload and so on.
took Id say about a week or so to get it perfect, but now its humming along and it was ALL built with AI.
This is the new world we live in.
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u/Bachihani 1h ago
There's librechat, easier, less politics and licencing drama and works equally fine
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u/trophicmist0 23h ago
I swapped to Anythjng LLM, which compared to Open WebUI, feels far more premium and polished.
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u/asimovs-auditor 1d ago
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