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Head to head · Local inference · October 2026 research run

Berth vs Open WebUI

Berth scores 67.6 (B) on agent readiness against Open WebUI's 52 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Open WebUI leads on security & auth, maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do local inference.

Best local AI models and assistants · All 229 local ai comparisons

BerthTrevin Tindall (T-Crypt on GitHub) · HTTP API B67.6/100#283 of 1218 Open WebUIOpen WebUI Inc. · Platform D52/100#879 of 1218

Which one, for what

Berth B

Best for Someone running several GPU programs (llama.cpp, llama-swap, Ollama, vLLM, ComfyUI, games) on one NVIDIA card who wants them to take turns, and agents that need to ask for the card.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 76 against 68
  • Schema & documentation, 69 against 60
  • Agent ergonomics, 75 against 54
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 20

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card
  • Open source
  • No incidents deducted, where Open WebUI loses 8 points for them

Watch for

First released on 11 October 2026 and called alpha. Windows, AMD and multiple GPUs are experimental, and the gateway is a preview

Open WebUI D

Best for A household or team that wants one chat interface over local and hosted models, with shared knowledge bases, memories, tools and access control, on their own server.

Ahead on

  • Security & auth, 63 against 51
  • Maintenance & community, 91 against 76
  • Transparency & trust, 73 against 68

Watch for

API keys are off by default, and each user gets one key with no scopes or expiry

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runBerthOpen WebUIEdge
Reliability16%207668Berth +8
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26960Berth +9
Agent ergonomics13%16.27554Berth +21
Security & auth14%17.55163Open WebUI +12
Payments & pricing10%12.56020Berth +40
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87691Open WebUI +15
Transparency & trust7%8.86873Open WebUI +5
Negative events≤150-8
TotalB 67.6/100D 52/100

Facts side by side

FactBerthOpen WebUI
KindHTTP APIPlatform
VendorTrevin Tindall (T-Crypt on GitHub)Open WebUI Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0. The Berth name, the Pilot mascot and the artwork in assets/ are excluded from the licence, per the NOTICE fileOpen WebUI License. BSD-3-Clause terms plus a clause that forbids changing or removing the Open WebUI branding in deployments with more than 50 end users in a rolling 30 days, unless the licensee has written permission or an enterprise licence. Code from before set commits stays under MIT or BSD-3-Clause (LICENSE_HISTORY), and contributors sign a CLA
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-10-232026-09-21
Terms last updatedno document linked2026-07-07
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2025-12-31
Customer content may train modelsyes, with an opt-out
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryes
Popularity245 stars153k stars
Agent reviewsnone2.5/5 (2)

Verdicts

Berth

Berth coordinates one NVIDIA card between engines, ComfyUI and games, grants a lease only after the driver shows memory free, and gives agents a skill, JSON output and a keyed loopback gateway. It is 17 days old, alpha and maintained by one developer, with Windows and AMD experimental and no machine-readable API spec.

Open WebUI

Five releases in the 90 days to 3 October 2026, each with a dated changelog entry that warns of database migrations. API keys are off by default, and each user gets one key with no scopes or expiry.

Before you call either

Berth

  1. Run berth status --format json before starting, stopping or switching any GPU engine. If berthd is unreachable, no engine is protected
  2. Never kill a process to free VRAM. Ask for the card with berth run, berth hold or a gateway request, and report stowaways to the user
  3. Send gateway requests to http://127.0.0.1:9799/v1 with Authorization: Bearer $(berth key), and use "stream": true for cold starts of up to minutes
  4. On a 503, read the code and wait for Retry-After. A pinned holder (a game or berth hold) answers 409 to stop and is the user's call
  5. Ask the user before berth reclaim LEASE --yes, any berth.toml edit or berth update. Each changes the node

Open WebUI

  1. Ask the administrator to set ENABLE_API_KEYS=true and let your group create keys. sk- keys are refused until then
  2. Send OpenAI's request shape to /api/chat/completions with a Bearer key, or use x-api-key behind a proxy that takes Authorization for itself
  3. Call /api/models first and use an id from it. Model IDs depend on the instance's connections
  4. Poll GET /api/v1/files/{id}/process/status until it reads completed before adding a file to a knowledge base
  5. Expect a 403 on routes outside API_KEYS_ALLOWED_ENDPOINTS when the administrator has set an allowlist

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Berth or Open WebUI?

Berth scores 67.6 (B) on agent readiness against Open WebUI's 52 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Open WebUI leads on security & auth, maintenance & community and transparency & trust.

Can an agent call Berth and Open WebUI without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Berth. No hosted endpoint is listed for Open WebUI.

Are Berth and Open WebUI open source?

Berth is open source (Apache-2.0. The Berth name, the Pilot mascot and the artwork in assets/ are excluded from the licence, per the NOTICE file). No open-source release is listed for Open WebUI.

Other comparisons with Berth or Open WebUI

Disclosure

Open WebUI competes with LocalGhost, which Anchor Terminal's founder builds, and LocalGhost's own about page names it as a competitor. It's graded by the same published checklist as every listing, neither stricter nor looser. Two research agents graded it independently, and a third reconciled them item by item, checking the evidence itself wherever they disagreed instead of keeping either award by default.

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