LLM Personal Assistant on GitHub in 2026: Open WebUI (148k Stars) vs Khoj vs LocalAI - Top Self-Hosted Assistants
Open WebUI (147,900 stars), Khoj (36,218) and LocalAI (48,248) are the top self-hosted LLM assistants on GitHub - here is what each is best at and how to run them in an afternoon.
💡 What You Will Learn
Open WebUI (147,900 stars), Khoj (36,218) and LocalAI (48,248) are the top self-hosted LLM assistants on GitHub - here is what each is best at and how to run them in an afternoon.
📜 Table of Contents
The short answer
Open WebUI (147,900 stars) is the most popular self-hosted ChatGPT interface: chat with Ollama or OpenAI-compatible models, plus RAG, web search, multi-user support and a plugin marketplace. Khoj (36,218 stars, AGPL-3.0) is the "second brain" that indexes your documents, notes and calendar. LocalAI (48,248 stars, MIT) is a drop-in OpenAI API replacement that runs everything - LLMs, vision, audio, image - on your hardware.
Quick start - Open WebUI + Ollama
docker run -d -p 3000:8080 -v open-webui:/app/backend/data -e OLLAMA_BASE_URL=http://host.docker.internal:11434 --name open-webui --restart always ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:main
- Install Ollama (177,825 stars) and pull a model:
ollama pull qwen2.5:7b - Open http://localhost:3000, create an admin account.
- Start chatting - or enable the built-in RAG by uploading documents in the chat.
Which assistant for you
| Tool | Stars | Best at | Setup |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open WebUI | 147,900 | Chat UI, multi-user, RAG | 15 min |
| Khoj | 36,218 | Personal knowledge search | 30 min |
| LocalAI | 48,248 | OpenAI API drop-in, all modalities | 20 min |
Real numbers
- Open WebUI runs on a 16GB machine with an 8B model; supports offline mode.
- Khoj has native apps for Android/iOS/desktop and syncs Obsidian/Notion.
- LocalAI serves ~20-40 tokens/sec for 7-8B models on CPU - enough for personal use.
FAQ
Q: Which is best for a beginner? A: Open WebUI - one Docker command, browser UI, works with Ollama out of the box.
Q: Can I use all three together? A: Yes - LocalAI as the model backend, Open WebUI as the chat frontend, and Khoj for document search.
Q: Do I need a GPU? A: No - all three work on CPU, just slower. A 7-8B quantized model on CPU gives usable response times.
❓ FAQ
Which is best for a beginner?
Open WebUI - one Docker command, browser UI, works with Ollama out of the box.
Can I use all three together?
Yes - LocalAI as the model backend, Open WebUI as the chat frontend, and Khoj for document search.
Do I need a GPU?
No - all three work on CPU, just slower. A 7-8B quantized model on CPU gives usable response times.
Written by our editorial team; tools listed here are tested or verified against public sources. Links point to official sites or GitHub repos for reference only โ no paid placements.
