composes/open-webui/README.md

open-webui

Open WebUI: a chat UI for OpenAI-compatible and Ollama model providers, with users, chat history, documents and RAG.

One container, serving on port 8080. It stores everything in SQLite and a local vector database under /app/backend/data.

Setup

1. Set WEBUI_SECRET_KEY.
2. Map the domain to port 8080 and deploy.
3. Open the domain. The first account to sign up becomes the admin.
4. Add model connections in Admin Settings → Connections.

Health check: GET /, also the compose healthcheck.

Environment

Variable	Default	Purpose
WEBUI_SECRET_KEY	—	Signs login tokens and encrypts stored secrets
BYPASS_MODEL_ACCESS_CONTROL	true	Every user sees every model
OPENAI_API_BASE_URL / OPENAI_API_KEY	optional	OpenAI-compatible connection seeded on first start
OLLAMA_BASE_URL	optional	Ollama connection seeded on first start

WEBUI_SECRET_KEY is required. Without it, start.sh generates a key into /app/backend/.webui_secret_key, outside the data volume, so every recreated container gets a new key: everyone is logged out, and anything encrypted with the old key can no longer be read.

BYPASS_MODEL_ACCESS_CONTROL is on because this is a single-person instance: models do not need to be shared with users one by one.

The connection variables are optional because Open WebUI keeps its connections in the database. They seed it only on first start, so once connections exist the admin UI is where they change.

Storage

Volume	Mount	Holds
open-webui	/app/backend/data	webui.db, uploads, the vector database, and model cache

Image

ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:latest is the latest release. Upstream publishes no major tag; main is built from every commit on the development branch, so latest is the stable moving tag.