What each tool is, and what a team owns
Open WebUI is a self-hosted chat interface over your models and documents, built to run entirely offline and support Ollama and any OpenAI-compatible API (Open WebUI's repository). AnythingLLM is a local-first application from Mintplex Labs: it ingests documents into workspaces, ships built-in agents and a no-code agent builder, and runs on a desktop or a server (AnythingLLM's repository). Kortix is the open-source AI Operating System, where agents, skills, memory and connectors live in one git repo you own.
The three differ most in what the team ends up owning. With Open WebUI and AnythingLLM, the team owns an instance: settings, an admin panel and a database, with answers and artifacts staying in the chat or the workspace. With Kortix, the team owns a repository: agents are markdown files, kortix.yaml declares the connectors and triggers, and configuration is diffable like any code.
Where the work changes hands
Open WebUI and AnythingLLM are both interface-first. A person drives each turn, and the output is an answer, a cited document or a generated artifact inside the conversation. Both have added execution: Open WebUI's Open Terminal gives an agent a terminal and filesystem, and AnythingLLM ships scheduled tasks and agent workflows.
Kortix is agent-first. Each session runs an agent on its own isolated sandbox and its own branch, and the agent can install, run and break anything on that machine while only what it commits survives (Read the docs). The output is finished work, from a deck to a patch, and it arrives as a change request a person reads before merge.
# kortix.yamlagents: support-triage: file: agents/support-triage.md connectors: all triggers: - slug: daily-digest type: cron cron: '0 0 9 * * 1-5'What each costs a team
All three projects are free to self-host, and every team still pays its own hosting and model bills. AnythingLLM also sells a hosted cloud, listed on its own cloud page at $50/monthly for a small team and $99/monthly for a larger one (AnythingLLM cloud); Open WebUI publishes no per-seat price and is free to use as-is (Open WebUI's enterprise page). Kortix lists Free at $0 with 200 credits per month and 1 project, and the team plan at $40 per seat per month with 2,500 pooled credits per seat (Kortix).
How to choose
Pick Open WebUI for a self-hosted chat and search window over your models and documents with a wide plugin ecosystem. Pick AnythingLLM for a local-first document and agent app that installs in minutes on a laptop or a server. Pick Kortix when the job has to run: agents that use your tools, return finished deliverables, and land each change for review on the infrastructure you choose. Kortix vs Open WebUI goes deeper on the pair, and Open WebUI for teams covers the team case.