What Open WebUI is
Open WebUI is a self-hosted AI platform built to run entirely offline, with support for Ollama and any OpenAI-compatible API (its repository). It puts a chat window over models and documents, and its own README lists plugins, MCP and OpenAPI tool servers, per-user groups and a local retrieval pipeline over nine vector databases (its repository).
The same project now ships companion pieces. Open Terminal gives an agent a terminal and filesystem inside the chat, and Terminals gives each user an isolated environment (its repository). Its docs describe Open WebUI as the stable multi-user platform, and a separate app, Computer, as the faster-moving one that runs on a machine you own (docs).
What Kortix is
Kortix is the open-source AI Operating System. Your agents, their skills, your company memory and every connector live in one git repo you own, and each session runs on its own cloud computer (source). Session work reaches main through a change request. Merge is default-deny for agents.
Where they differ
The two sit at different layers.
- Open WebUI is a chat interface first. It answers, and it can hold documents, retrieval, web search and plugins. The conversation is where the work lives.
- Kortix is an agent platform first. Agents run on real cloud computers, take real actions in your tools and return finished work as artifacts you keep, and the configuration is files in a repo you own.
Open WebUI has moved toward execution with Open Terminal and a faster app on your own machine, while its center stays the interface. Kortix's center is the work, with every change a diff you read before it merges.
Which one fits your team
Pick Open WebUI if you want a self-hosted chat and search interface over your models and documents, with plugins and a wide model list. Pick Kortix if the job has to run: agents that use your tools, return finished deliverables and land each change for review on the infrastructure you choose.
Both run on hardware you control. The question is whether the output you need is an answer in a chat or a change you can read and merge.
Start with one job and let an agent run it: Try Kortix.