Open WebUI — Railway Template

Self-hosted Open WebUI (formerly Ollama WebUI) — a beautiful, feature-rich interface for running LLMs locally or via API. Deploy in minutes on Railway.

Features

• Chat with any LLM — connect to local Ollama instances or remote APIs
• Beautiful web interface — dark/light themes, markdown/code rendering, streaming responses
• Fully self-hosted — no data leaves your infrastructure
• SQLite-first deployment — zero external dependencies; PostgreSQL optional
• OAuth support — integrate with Google, GitHub, or any OpenID provider
• Plugin-ready — extensible architecture for custom tools and integrations

Architecture

┌─────────────────┐
│   Railway CDN   │ ◄── Production traffic
└────────┬────────┘
         │
┌────────▼────────┐
│  Open WebUI      │ ◄── Express + WebUI (Docker)
│  Container       │     - /health endpoint
│                  │     - PORT=8080
├──────────────────┤
│  /data volume    │ ◄── Persistent SQLite DB
└──────────────────┘

Deploy and Host

About Hosting

Open WebUI runs as a single Docker container with a persistent volume for SQLite database storage. It requires no external database dependencies and can connect to any OpenAI-compatible API or Ollama instance.

Railway provides automatic HTTPS, global CDN, health monitoring, and scalable infrastructure. The default health check at /health ensures Railway can monitor service availability.

• Default Port: 8080 (configurable via PORT)
• Health Check: GET /health — returns HTTP 200 when ready
• Startup Time: ~2 seconds (Open WebUI is lightweight)
• Resource Usage: ~256MB RAM baseline

Why Deploy

Open WebUI is the most popular self-hosted LLM interface (20K+ GitHub stars) with features that rival ChatGPT:

• Full privacy — All conversations stay in your infrastructure
• Model flexibility — Switch between OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Ollama, or any OpenAI-compatible API
• No vendor lock-in — Self-hosted means you control costs and data
• Zero external dependencies — SQLite backend works out of the box

With Railway, you get automatic HTTPS, global CDN, health monitoring, and scalable infrastructure — without managing servers.

Common Use Cases

• Local LLM interface — Connect to a self-hosted Ollama or other local model server
• Multi-API gateway — Use multiple LLM providers from one interface
• Team AI portal — Share a self-hosted ChatGPT experience with your team
• Privacy-focused chat — Keep all AI interactions private and auditable
• Custom tooling — Extend with JavaScript functions and custom integrations

Dependencies for Open WebUI

Deployment Dependencies

• Runtime: Open WebUI v0.10.1 (bundled in the container image)
• Storage: Persistent volume at /data for SQLite database
• External access: Port 8080 for the web interface and API
• Optional: Ollama or OpenAI-compatible API endpoint (set OLLAMA_BASE_URL or provider API keys)

Environment Variables

The deploy form only asks for the up-front knobs. Every other Open WebUI setting (sign-up toggles, OAuth/OIDC, LDAP, RAG, image generation, etc.) is configurable from the in-app admin UI after your first login — see Configuring after deploy. Defaults are safe for everyone else.

These are the only variables rendered on the Railway template deploy form. Other Open WebUI variables (PostgreSQL URL, RAG embedding model, web search key, etc.) can be added from the Railway Variables tab and are also exposed in the admin UI.

Getting Started

1. Click the Deploy on Railway button above.
2. Wait for the build to complete (usually < 2 minutes).
3. Visit your Railway app URL — the first signup is automatically promoted to admin.
4. Open the admin panel (/admin/settings) and configure sign-up, OAuth, API keys, and providers — see Configuring after deploy.
5. Hit /health — returns 200 OK once the app is fully up.

Configuring after deploy

The deploy form is intentionally short. Sign-up toggles, OAuth/OIDC, LDAP, and the bulk of Open WebUI's ~150 environment variables are exposed in the admin UI at /admin/settings.

Enable or disable sign-up

1. Log in as the admin (the first account created).
2. Click your avatar → Admin Panel.
3. Open Settings → General (/admin/settings).
4. Toggle Enable Sign-Up. Flip it off once you've created your admin account to lock the deployment to invited users.
5. Use Default User Role to pre-stage new accounts as pending, user, or another role.

Set up OAuth / OIDC

Open WebUI has first-class OAuth/OIDC support for Google, GitHub, Microsoft, and generic OIDC, plus LDAP/AD for enterprise. As of v0.6+ these settings live on a dedicated Authentication page (moved out of General):

1. In Railway, set WEBSITE_HOSTNAME to your production URL (https://your-app.up.railway.app). OAuth callbacks reject mismatched origins — set this before testing the login button.
2. In the admin UI, open Settings → Authentication.
3. Toggle Enable OAuth/OIDC Sign-In.
4. Fill in Client ID, Client Secret, and the discovery URLs (/.well-known/openid-configuration) — inline placeholders are provided for Google, GitHub, Microsoft, and generic OIDC.
5. Save, log out, and re-test the login page — the provider button should appear.

Add LLM provider keys

Per-user API keys live in each user's profile. To set a default for new users or configure a global admin key, go to Settings → Connections in the admin UI. This avoids setting environment variables per user.

Adjust other advanced settings

Almost every env var in upstream Open WebUI .env.example has an equivalent admin UI control — search the Settings page for RAG, Web Search, Image Generation, Default User Role, etc. If a setting is only exposed as an env var, set it directly from the Railway Variables tab.

Connecting to a Local Ollama Instance

If you're running Open WebUI alongside a separate Ollama service on Railway:

1. Deploy the railway-ollama template in the same project.
2. On your Open WebUI service, set OPENAI_API_BASE_URL=http://ollama.railway.internal:11434/v1 (Ollama ≥0.3 ships with an OpenAI-compatible gateway).
3. Restart the Open WebUI service and pull a model from the Ollama service's settings.
4. Set DEFAULT_MODELS=llama3.1:latest (or whatever model you pulled) in the Open WebUI service to surface it in the chat picker.

Troubleshooting

Build fails: Ensure DOCKERFILE builder is selected and your git branch is up to date.

Login page errors or app won't start: WEBSITE_HOSTNAME is optional at deploy, but if you set it, make sure it includes the correct protocol (https://...). OAuth and secure cookies require the production URL.

OAuth button missing on login page: Confirm two things — WEBSITE_HOSTNAME matches your production URL exactly (with https://), and OAuth is toggled on in Settings → Authentication. Re-test after saving.

No models in the chat picker: Either set DEFAULT_MODELS to a model you've configured, or open Settings → Connections in the admin UI and add a provider + API key.

Database empty after redeploy: Make sure your Railway volume (mounted at /data) persists across deploys. Delete and recreate the volume only if you intentionally want a fresh SQLite store.

Resources

• Open WebUI Documentation
• Railway Docs
• Repository