The short answer
Short answer, prices read on 19 October 2026: a 20-person team on ChatGPT Business or Claude Team Standard seats pays $400 a month billed annually ($500 billed monthly). Open WebUI, LibreChat and AnythingLLM are free to self-host, so the same team can move to its own chat server and pay only for the server and the API tokens. On Hostinger‘s KVM 2 at $8.79 a month, that leaves $391.21 a month for tokens, which on GPT-6.1 Sol or Claude Sonnet 5.5 buys about 2,173 chat turns per person a month in our worked example. Pick LibreChat or AnythingLLM for an MIT licence with no conditions; pick Open WebUI for the widest built-in feature set, and keep its branding once you pass 50 users.
| Option | What you pay for | A month, 20 people | Tokens |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT Business, Standard | 20 seats at $20 (annual) or $25 (monthly) | $400 or $500 | included, within OpenAI’s usage limits |
| Claude Team, Standard | 20 seats at $20 (annual) or $25 (monthly) | $400 or $500 | included, within Anthropic’s usage limits |
| AnythingLLM Cloud Basic | one private hosted instance, bring your own API key | $50 | you pay the API |
| AnythingLLM Cloud Pro | priority resources, 72-hour support SLA | $99 | you pay the API |
| Open WebUI, LibreChat or AnythingLLM on Hostinger KVM 2 Our pick | 2 vCPU, 8 GB RAM VPS, software free | $8.79 for 24 months ($210.96 upfront), then $14.99 | you pay the API |
Our pick means we earn a commission if you buy through our link. Hostinger is our pick for the server because its Ollama VPS template comes with Open WebUI pre-installed. That does not change any score: Hostinger scores 1.9 on our published rubric, Open WebUI 7.3 and AnythingLLM 7.5. This site runs on Hostinger’s web hosting, not on a VPS. See Hostinger VPS plans.
How many chat turns the seat money buys
A seat is a flat fee; an API is metered. To compare them, we turned the seat bill into a token budget. 20 annual Standard seats cost $400 a month. Take away the $8.79 server and $391.21 is left, or $19.56 per person. Our worked example is one chat turn of 2,000 input tokens and 500 output tokens. That is our assumption, not a measurement: neither OpenAI nor Anthropic publishes how many tokens a seat holder uses.
| Model on the API | Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | One example turn | Turns per person a month for the seat money |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-6 Luna or Claude Haiku 5.5 | $0.10 / $0.50 | $0.0004 | 43,467 |
| GPT-6.1 Sol or Claude Sonnet 5.5 | $2 / $10 | $0.009 | 2,173 |
| GPT-6 Astra | $10 / $50 | $0.04 | 434 |
On the mid-tier models that is about 98 turns per person per working day over 22 days before self-hosting costs more than the seats. Put another way, each $20 seat equals 2 million output tokens on GPT-6.1 Sol. A team that mostly asks short questions of a small model will rarely reach the line; a team that pastes long documents into GPT-6 Astra can pass it in 434 turns. On AnythingLLM Cloud Basic instead of a VPS, the budget drops to $350 and the mid-tier line to 1,944 turns a person.
What the token budget does not buy: a ChatGPT or Claude seat bundles the vendor’s own apps, agents and admin tools, and the self-hosted route makes you the admin. Long chats also re-send earlier messages as input, so a real turn can cost more than our example. For the model-serving side of this decision, see Self-hosting an LLM against paying per token: the break-even.
The licences: two MIT, one with a 50-user branding rule
| Open WebUI | LibreChat | AnythingLLM | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Licence | Open WebUI License since v0.6.6 (19 April 2025); BSD-3 up to v0.6.5 | MIT | MIT |
| Free for internal team use | Yes, with the Open WebUI branding left intact | Yes | Yes |
| Rebrand or white-label | Allowed at 50 or fewer users in a 30-day period; above that, an enterprise licence (sales only) | Allowed | Allowed; the hosted plans also advertise white-labeling |
| Owner | Open WebUI Inc. | ClickHouse (acquisition announced 4 November 2025) | Mintplex Labs Inc. |
| GitHub stars | 156,133 | 45,959 | 67,300 |
Open WebUI’s licence page sums it up as “Want to use Open WebUI for free? Just keep the branding.” Its enterprise page lists internal use with the original branding intact as free, and white-labeling or rebranding as “Enterprise License Required”, priced through sales by seat count and not sold to individuals. For an internal team chat that keeps the logo, the clause costs nothing. It matters to an agency that wants to resell a rebranded chat to a client with more than 50 users: that is the case the clause was written for. LibreChat and AnythingLLM carry plain MIT licences, so neither question comes up.
What each one is built for
Open WebUI is the broadest of the three. Its own docs list knowledge and RAG with 13 vector databases and 8 extraction engines, plus RBAC, SSO, OIDC, LDAP and SCIM 2.0 for user management. It connects to Ollama for local models and to OpenAI-compatible APIs. Release v0.12.3 shipped on 16 October 2026.
LibreChat is a multi-provider chat front end: side-by-side answers from different models in one conversation, a built-in code interpreter for supported models, MCP support, and SSO with OAuth, SAML, LDAP and two-factor auth. Open WebUI’s own comparison page calls it MIT licensed and free to self-host. ClickHouse says existing deployments “continue unchanged” after the acquisition.
AnythingLLM is the one with a hosted price on the page: Basic $50 and Pro $99 a month for a private instance where you bring your own API key, or free to self-host with Docker. It also ships a desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux that runs models on the user’s own computer with no account. For the retrieval side of an internal assistant, see RAG frameworks for an internal knowledge assistant.
The server: what Hostinger’s template gives you
Hostinger’s support page says its Ollama VPS template “comes pre-installed with Ollama, the Llama3 model, and Open WebUI”. That makes Open WebUI the shortest path on this host; LibreChat and AnythingLLM install with Docker on the same plans. Hostinger also warns that response speed “highly depends” on the model and the number of CPU cores, and none of these plans has a GPU, so for a 20-person team we would point the chat at an API model and use local models only for light jobs.
| Plan | vCPU | RAM | First 24 months | Renews at |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hostinger KVM 1 Our pick | 1 | 4 GB | $6.49 a month | $11.99 a month |
| Hostinger KVM 2 Our pick | 2 | 8 GB | $8.79 a month | $14.99 a month |
| Hostinger KVM 4 Our pick | 4 | 16 GB | $12.99 a month | $28.99 a month |
| Hostinger KVM 8 Our pick | 8 | 32 GB | $25.99 a month | $49.99 a month |
Year one on KVM 2 is $105.48; after the 24-month term it renews at $179.88 a year. Either is below one month of 20 annual seats. We did not load-test these plans, so read them as list prices, not as a throughput promise. Our pick for the server: KVM 2 with the Ollama template. Try Hostinger VPS hosting.
Where search results get it wrong
We captured Google’s AI Overview and AI Mode for “open webui vs librechat” on 19 October 2026 and checked each claim against the vendor pages the same day.
| Search result says | Vendor page says |
|---|---|
| AI Overview: Open WebUI’s licence is BSD-3 | BSD-3 covers code up to v0.6.5 only. Since v0.6.6 (19 April 2025) it is the Open WebUI License with a branding clause; GitHub reports it as NOASSERTION |
| AI Overview: LibreChat and Open WebUI are the two most popular open-source chat interfaces | GitHub stars: Open WebUI 156,133, AnythingLLM 67,300, LibreChat 45,959 |
| AI Mode: Open WebUI supports 13+ vector databases | Open WebUI’s docs: 13 vector databases |
The tools on this page
Open WebUI
Self-hosted AI platform with chat, knowledge bases, tools and team management. Free for internal use with its branding intact; rebranding above 50 users needs an enterprise licence.
AnythingLLM
MIT-licensed workspace app: free with Docker or as a desktop app, or hosted at $50 and $99 a month with your own API key.
Hostinger Our pick
VPS plans from $6.49 to $25.99 a month on a 24-month term, with an Ollama template that pre-installs Open WebUI. Watch the renewal line on every card. See Hostinger VPS plans.
Ollama
The local model runner in Hostinger’s template. Useful for small models on a CPU server; for a team’s main chat model, the API rows above are the ones we priced.
LibreChat has no tool page on this site yet; it links to its GitHub repository. For assistants with a free plan instead of a server, see ChatGPT alternatives with a free plan, and what each limits.
How we checked
Every price, licence term and quote on this page was read on 19 October 2026 on the vendor’s own page in a rendered browser: the Open WebUI licence, enterprise and comparison pages, LibreChat’s site, ClickHouse’s announcement, AnythingLLM’s cloud and home pages, OpenAI’s ChatGPT Business help article and pricing page, Claude’s pricing page (Team and API tabs) and Hostinger’s VPS and help pages. Stars, licences and releases come from the GitHub REST API and each repository’s LICENSE file. The team size and the chat turn are our worked example, and every total is our arithmetic. We did not run a load test or measure a team’s real usage, so this is a price and licence check, not a performance test. For more self-hostable replacements, see Open source AI tools you can self-host, and what they replace.
Questions people ask about Open WebUI, LibreChat and AnythingLLM
Is there anything better than Open WebUI?
It depends on the job. LibreChat and AnythingLLM are MIT licensed with no branding rule; Open WebUI lists more built-in features, including 13 vector databases for RAG and SCIM 2.0. AnythingLLM is the only one of the three with a hosted price on its page ($50 and $99 a month), read 19 October 2026.
Is LibreChat worth it?
For a team that wants one chat window over several model providers with a plain MIT licence, yes: it is free to self-host, and ClickHouse, which announced its acquisition on 4 November 2025, says deployments continue unchanged. You pay for the server and the API tokens.
What are some alternatives to LibreChat?
Open WebUI and AnythingLLM are the two self-hosted options we priced on this page; both connect to OpenAI, Anthropic and local models through Ollama.
Is Open WebUI free for commercial use?
Yes for internal use with the Open WebUI branding left visible. Removing the branding is allowed at 50 or fewer users in a 30-day period; above that it needs an enterprise licence, priced by sales.
Who owns LibreChat?
ClickHouse announced it acquired LibreChat on 4 November 2025. The code stays under the MIT License.
Is self-hosting a team chat cheaper than ChatGPT Business?
For 20 people, ChatGPT Business Standard costs $400 a month billed annually. A $8.79 Hostinger VPS leaves $391.21 for API tokens, about 2,173 example chat turns per person a month on GPT-6.1 Sol. Below that usage, self-hosting is cheaper.
Can I run Open WebUI with local models on a cheap VPS?
Hostinger’s Ollama template installs Ollama, Llama3 and Open WebUI together, but its own help page says speed depends on the model and the CPU cores. None of the VPS plans priced here has a GPU.
Related reading
- Self-hosting an LLM against paying per token: the break-even
- ChatGPT alternatives with a free plan, and what each limits
- RAG frameworks for an internal knowledge assistant
- Open source LLM serving stacks and what an H100 hour costs
- Open source AI tools you can self-host, and what they replace
Sources
- Open WebUI Docs, Open WebUI License, read 19 October 2026.
- Open WebUI Docs, Open WebUI for Enterprise, read 19 October 2026.
- Open WebUI Docs, Open WebUI and LibreChat, read 19 October 2026.
- Open WebUI on GitHub (REST API, LICENSE), read 19 October 2026.
- LibreChat on GitHub (REST API, LICENSE), read 19 October 2026.
- LibreChat, home page, read 19 October 2026.
- ClickHouse, ClickHouse acquires LibreChat (4 November 2025), read 19 October 2026.
- AnythingLLM on GitHub (REST API, LICENSE), read 19 October 2026.
- AnythingLLM, Cloud pricing, read 19 October 2026.
- AnythingLLM, home page, read 19 October 2026.
- OpenAI Help Center, ChatGPT Business overview, read 19 October 2026.
- OpenAI, Business pricing (API), read 19 October 2026.
- Anthropic, Claude pricing (Team and API), read 19 October 2026.
- Hostinger, VPS hosting, read 19 October 2026.
- Hostinger Help, Ollama VPS template, read 19 October 2026.
- Google AI Overview and AI Mode for “open webui vs librechat”, our capture, 19 October 2026.
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