# Open WebUI vs TextGen

> Open WebUI scores 51.8 (D) on agent readiness against TextGen's 45.1 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. TextGen leads on payments & pricing. Both do local inference. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/open-webui-vs-text-generation-webui
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/open-webui-vs-text-generation-webui.md (~2,650 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/open-webui-vs-text-generation-webui.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/open-webui-vs-text-generation-webui.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-09

Open WebUI scores 51.8 (D) on agent readiness against TextGen's 45.1 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. TextGen leads on payments & pricing. Both do local inference.

- Open WebUI: grade D, 51.8/100, rank #664 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/open-webui.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/open-webui.json
- TextGen: grade E, 45.1/100, rank #775 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/text-generation-webui.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/text-generation-webui.json

## Which one, for what

### Open WebUI (D)

Good 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:
- Reliability, 68 against 51
- Security & auth, 63 against 40
- Maintenance & community, 91 against 24
- Transparency & trust, 71 against 49

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

### TextGen (E)

Good for: A person who wants one app for several backends (llama.cpp, ExLlamaV3, Transformers) with an OpenAI and Anthropic-compatible endpoint, LoRA training and image generation.

Ahead on:
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 20

Also in its favour:
- Free to start without a card
- Open source

Watch for: No release since v4.9 on 20 May 2026 and no code commit on `main` or `dev` since 31 May 2026


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Open WebUI | TextGen | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 68 | 51 | Open WebUI +17 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 60 | 61 | TextGen +1 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 54 | 50 | Open WebUI +4 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 63 | 40 | Open WebUI +23 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 60 | TextGen +40 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 91 | 24 | Open WebUI +67 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 71 | 49 | Open WebUI +22 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -8 | -4 | |
| **Total** | | **51.8 · D** | **45.1 · E** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Open WebUI | TextGen |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model platform | Model platform |
| Vendor | Open WebUI Inc. | oobabooga |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Open 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 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-09-21 | 2026-05-20 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-07-07 | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-12-31 | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | yes, with an opt-out |  |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes |  |
| Popularity | 153k stars | 48k stars |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (2) | none |

## Verdicts

**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.

**TextGen.** AGPL-3.0 with no telemetry, and a local API on 127.0.0.1:5000 that checks the Host header, limits CORS to localhost and separates an admin key from the caller's key. No release since v4.9 on 20 May 2026, no code commits since 31 May, no test suite, and ten security advisories in the year, all fixed.

## Before you call either

### 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

### TextGen

1. Ask the owner to launch with `--api`. Nothing listens on port 5000 without it, and a model must be loaded first
2. Call `http://127.0.0.1:5000/v1`. Any Host header other than localhost or 127.0.0.1 gets 400 `Invalid host header` unless `--listen` is set
3. Send the key as `Authorization: Bearer` on OpenAI routes and as `x-api-key` on `/v1/messages`. Model loading needs the admin key
4. Read `http://127.0.0.1:5000/docs` or `modules/api/typing.py` for parameters. `max_tokens` defaults to 512 on chat completions
5. Run tool calls yourself. The API returns `finish_reason: "tool_calls"` and executes nothing on the server
6. Use the repository name `oobabooga/textgen`. The old `text-generation-webui` URL redirects

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Open WebUI or TextGen?

Open WebUI scores 51.8 (D) on agent readiness against TextGen's 45.1 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. TextGen leads on payments & pricing.

### Are Open WebUI and TextGen open source?

No open-source release is listed for Open WebUI. TextGen is open source (AGPL-3.0).


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/open-webui-vs-text-generation-webui.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/open-webui-vs-text-generation-webui.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "open-webui", "b": "text-generation-webui"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare open-webui text-generation-webui`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/open-webui.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/text-generation-webui.json

## Other comparisons with Open WebUI or TextGen

- [AnythingLLM vs Open WebUI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anythingllm-vs-open-webui.md)
- [AnythingLLM vs TextGen](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anythingllm-vs-text-generation-webui.md)
- [Docker Model Runner vs Open WebUI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docker-model-runner-vs-open-webui.md)
- [Docker Model Runner vs TextGen](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docker-model-runner-vs-text-generation-webui.md)
- [Foundry Local vs Open WebUI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/foundry-local-vs-open-webui.md)
- [Foundry Local vs TextGen](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/foundry-local-vs-text-generation-webui.md)
- [Core vs Open WebUI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ghost-core-vs-open-webui.md)
- [Core vs TextGen](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ghost-core-vs-text-generation-webui.md)
- [GPT4All vs Open WebUI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpt4all-vs-open-webui.md)
- [GPT4All vs TextGen](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gpt4all-vs-text-generation-webui.md)
- [Jan vs Open WebUI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-open-webui.md)
- [Jan vs TextGen](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/jan-vs-text-generation-webui.md)
- [Khoj vs Open WebUI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/khoj-vs-open-webui.md)
- [Khoj vs TextGen](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/khoj-vs-text-generation-webui.md)
- [KoboldCpp vs Open WebUI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/koboldcpp-vs-open-webui.md)
- [KoboldCpp vs TextGen](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/koboldcpp-vs-text-generation-webui.md)
- [Lemonade vs Open WebUI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lemonade-vs-open-webui.md)
- [Lemonade vs TextGen](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lemonade-vs-text-generation-webui.md)
- [llama.cpp vs Open WebUI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/llama-cpp-vs-open-webui.md)
- [llama.cpp vs TextGen](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/llama-cpp-vs-text-generation-webui.md)
- [LM Studio vs Open WebUI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lm-studio-vs-open-webui.md)
- [LM Studio vs TextGen](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lm-studio-vs-text-generation-webui.md)
- [LocalAI vs Open WebUI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/localai-vs-open-webui.md)
- [LocalAI vs TextGen](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/localai-vs-text-generation-webui.md)
- [MLX LM vs Open WebUI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mlx-lm-vs-open-webui.md)
- [MLX LM vs TextGen](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mlx-lm-vs-text-generation-webui.md)
- [Ollama vs Open WebUI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ollama-vs-open-webui.md)
- [Ollama vs TextGen](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ollama-vs-text-generation-webui.md)
- [Open WebUI vs screenpipe](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/open-webui-vs-screenpipe.md)
- [screenpipe vs TextGen](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/screenpipe-vs-text-generation-webui.md)
- [TextGen vs Underdog](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/text-generation-webui-vs-underdog.md)

## 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.