Are Open WebUI and Dify free to self-host?

Yes. Open WebUI is free to use as-is, with paid enterprise terms for white-labeling and dedicated support. Dify's community edition self-hosts free, and its cloud plans are paid. Kortix self-host is free.

Does Open WebUI support single sign-on and role-based access control?

Yes. Open WebUI documents LDAP and Active Directory, SSO providers, SCIM 2.0 and role-based access control with groups. Kortix covers the same ground with SAML 2.0 single sign-on and SCIM 2.0, plus per-resource permissions for people and agents.

Which tool fits a team that needs to run work, not just chat?

Kortix. Open WebUI gives a chat front end and Dify publishes an app; Kortix runs an agent on its own cloud computer and returns finished work through a change request you approve. Start with one job and grow from there.

Where does each tool keep its configuration?

Open WebUI and Dify keep it in their databases and admin consoles. Kortix keeps it as files in a git repo you own, so you can diff any change and roll any part of it back.

Open WebUI vs Dify: and the open-source Kortix for the work

Open WebUI vs Dify, and where Kortix, the open-source AI Operating System, fits

Open WebUI is a self-hosted chat front end over your models. Dify is a platform for building AI applications on a visual canvas. They answer different questions, and neither runs the work itself. Kortix, the open-source AI Operating System, runs agents on real cloud computers and lands what they produce through a change request you approve.

What Open WebUI is and what Dify is

Open WebUI is a self-hosted chat front end over models you point it at. It connects to local Ollama models and to any OpenAI-compatible API, and gives a team one workspace for chat, shared channels, and a knowledge library (Open WebUI on GitHub). Its own description calls it a daily AI workspace for chat, knowledge management, and collaboration.

Dify is an application builder for AI. It is a visual canvas where a team wires a prompt, a retrieval pipeline and a set of tools into a workflow, then publishes that workflow as a web app or an API (Dify on GitHub). The two are easy to confuse because both are open source and both run on your own infrastructure, but they answer different questions. Open WebUI is a place to use models. Dify is a place to build with them.

The distinction that decides the choice

A chat front end and an application builder sit at different layers. Open WebUI's own comparison says it focuses on using AI rather than building AI applications, and that the two can run together: a Dify app exposes an OpenAI-compatible API, and Open WebUI can add that endpoint as a model (Open WebUI on Dify).

That combination changes the question. If your team already runs Dify, you do not have to choose between the two. In Open WebUI, open Admin → Settings → Connections, add an OpenAI-compatible connection with the Dify app's API URL and key, and the Dify app shows up as a model in the chat. So "is Dify an alternative to Open WebUI" has a partial answer: Dify replaces the building side, Open WebUI replaces the chat side, and each one leaves the other's job open.

A decision guide for a small team

Pick by the job you have.

If the job is a private place for the team to talk to models, keep Open WebUI. It is built around the conversation, and its channels, knowledge base and per-group access already cover that.
If the job is to ship an AI feature or automate a process, use Dify. Its visual canvas, prompt IDE and retrieval pipeline exist to turn a workflow into an app.
If the job is a task that runs to completion on your infrastructure and lands as something a person reviews, use Kortix. Chat and app-building both stop short of that.

The first two are not exclusive, and many teams run them together. The third sits at a different layer, and it is the one most teams reach next.

Where Kortix fits when the work has to run on your own infrastructure

Kortix is the open-source AI Operating System: your agents, their skills, your company memory, and every connector in one git repo you own, with the agents working on real cloud computers (Kortix docs). A trigger or a person starts a session; the agent works on your infrastructure; what it produces lands through a change request a person approves.

That review step is the part a chat front end and an app builder leave to you. Open WebUI and Dify are where a person asks a model for an answer or publishes an app. Kortix is where an agent takes a job and returns a change you read before it reaches main. Session work reaches main through a change request, and merge is default-deny for agents. Run it on Kortix Cloud, in your VPC, or on your own on-prem network, and self-host is free.

If you are looking for an open webui alternative because your team needs agents that run work rather than a chat window, Kortix is that layer. It is model-agnostic: any model provider with your own keys. And it is open source. Read it, fork it, audit it.

What a self-hosted setup looks like

The configuration lives in a file you can read. An agent is one markdown file for its behavior plus one block in kortix.yaml for its governance. This is the shape from the Kortix README:

yamlyaml

# kortix.yamlagents:  support-triage:    file: agents/support-triage.md   # what it does, in plain markdown    connectors: all                  # what it may reach

One isolated sandbox per session, so the agent can install, run and break anything and only what it commits survives. Open WebUI's terminal runs inside the chat, and Dify's agent sandbox serves the app you built. The comparison table on this page puts all three side by side.

From here, the Kortix vs Open WebUI comparison goes deeper on the chat side, best Open WebUI alternatives covers the wider field, and self-hosting walks through running Kortix on your own box.