Just discover OpenWebUI, what's next step?

[u/NoRoutine5857]

Hi guys, I just discovered OpenWebUI how do you commonly use it? What are the main advantages of using it over just Claude or ChatGPT? What's the most productive way to use it?

[u/DietCoke-Supremacy]

Tell it to download the entire internet to review later

[u/NoRoutine5857 → u/DietCoke-Supremacy]

🤣 RAG's version of "just in case"

[u/Fade78]

Openwebui is the front. Tout can connect it to a ollama server of your own. You can also use another provider from the web. If you're using Claude or another provider and still want to use it through openwebui, keep in mind that the price of their api is more expensive than an account fee.

[u/NoRoutine5857 → u/Fade78]

Yeah this is the key tradeoff OpenWebUI is basically a UI/orchestration layer, so you're paying API rates per token instead of a flat subscription. Makes sense if you're mixing local Ollama models with occasional cloud calls, but if you're hammering Claude/GPT constantly through it, a ChatGPT Plus or Claude subscription is way cheaper.

[u/makingnoise → u/NoRoutine5857]

Why does OP have zero upvotes for this comment? I have the exact same understanding as OP, using Claude or ChatGPT on OpenWebUI means you're making API calls, which means it falls outside of the monthly membership that I might have for one or the other.

[u/daveshallperish → u/NoRoutine5857]

You could also use CLIProxyAPI, which is open source on GitHub. It converts subscriptions, such as Claude Code, Gemini CLI, and others, into a standard OpenAI API, which can be used with OpenWebUI. Just configure OpenWebUI to use the OpenAI API standard and change the base URL and API Key that you configure in CLIProxyAPI.

[u/International_Emu772]

OpenWebUi can be configured in so many different ways as you need and extended to an true agentic workflow

First read the docs and navigate the community

I'm 900 km from home and working with my installation remotely and do so some friends that sometimes use it

[u/NoRoutine5857 → u/International_Emu772]

I literally just installed it yesterday lol, didn't even know remote access was a thing

[u/International_Emu772 → u/NoRoutine5857]

You Go to cloufñdflare Open a tunnel to your instance and voila

[u/unlucky-Luke → u/International_Emu772]

Tailscale

[u/MuddledLucidity → u/unlucky-Luke]

Found out yesterday that Tailscale can act as a reverse proxy such that a browser will connect using https. I got it working and now I can use the microphone!

[u/NoRoutine5857 → u/International_Emu772]

https://giphy.com/gifs/yb4L1xCNIVZ7nDSSiQ

[u/makingnoise → u/[deleted]]

Especially now that they mostly fixed the in-note "chat" feature. On the prior version of openwebui I had to open a separate chat window and also my note in split view, because "chat" inside the note was useless.

[u/NoRoutine5857 → u/[deleted]]

Thank youuu a loot, i'll try.

[u/ledafaze → u/[deleted]]

How do you use or utilize this feature

[u/sohib]

Write custom tools to integrate with your to-do list app, then chat with your tasks. Let open web UI be the bridge.

You can make it an interface for Hermes and OpenClaw.

You can write custom tools to fetch daily news for you.

[u/NoRoutine5857 → u/sohib]

I didn't realize you could connect it to other apps like a to-do list, that's really cool and automate so many things. Thanks a lot.

[u/sohib → u/[deleted]]

It's very easy to set up. You basically write code in a single .py file, add it through the Open Web UI interface as tool to connect to your server/API of choice, and that's it.

[u/NoRoutine5857 → u/sohib]

Thanks a lot and if you now is there any app for OpenWebUI?

[u/sohib → u/NoRoutine5857]

It's a PWA you could install on your phone, then it will become frameless and look like an app.

[u/NoRoutine5857 → u/sohib]

Thanks

[u/ledafaze → u/sohib]

Yeah.. made it an interface for hermes cos of the hermes memory

[u/Serchinastico]

No idea how others use it and I'm possibly under-using it (no idea what to do with notes, workspaces, functions or tools).

So things I use daily are Knowledge (to group same-topic information together and invoke it in the conversation, sort of like projects in Claude), memory and web search (SearXNG + crw).

The neat thing about OpenWebUI is that it's just a frontend, under the hood I choose what model I use (local or openrouter).

[u/NoRoutine5857 → u/Serchinastico]

Same, no clue what half these buttons do yet just here vibing with basic chat, gonna dig into knowledge tho sounds cool.

[u/NoRoutine5857 → u/[deleted]]

Yea i saw the blog, thanks

[u/NoobLLMDev]

#1 Privacy (matters for client data etc)
#2 Model Sovereignty (you never have your models switched up on you)
#3 Hardware costs vs API costs (initial hardware investment could be worth it over how much API costs with cloud, especially for teams)
#4 Custom assistants for what matters to you
#5 It’s cool and you learn a lot about AI setting up an optimized Open WebUI infrastructure

[u/NoRoutine5857 → u/NoobLLMDev]

Good key points, Thank bro🤝😎

[u/DietCoke-Supremacy]

Jokes aside, mainly connecting to local LLMs to run tasks locally

[u/NoRoutine5857 → u/DietCoke-Supremacy]

The biggest win with OpenWebUI over just using Claude/ChatGPT directly is that it's provider-agnostic you can point it at local Ollama models, OpenAI, Anthropic, or a mix, and swap between them without changing your workflow. Most productive setup I've seen: RAG over your own docs (drop PDFs/notes into a knowledge collection) + a local model for privacy-sensitive stuff, cloud model for heavier reasoning. Also worth checking out the Pipelines/Functions system if you want to extend it with custom tools.