Open WebUI License 2026: What the Branding Clause Means for Businesses

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Open WebUI is one of the most widely used interfaces for self-hosted language models. Less well known is that the software has not been under a classic open source licence since May 2025. Since version 0.6.6, the Open WebUI License applies: BSD-3-Clause with an additional branding clause. The name and logo may only be removed or replaced in three cases.

For most businesses this changes little: anyone using Open WebUI with its original branding uses it free of charge, regardless of the number of users. The clause becomes relevant as soon as an organisation wants to roll out the interface under its own brand, combine logos or pass Open WebUI on to customers.

This article walks through the licence text: the licence history with versions and dates, what is allowed and what is not, how the 50-user threshold is counted, what the enterprise licence covers, what role forks on a BSD-3 basis play and how AnythingLLM and LibreChat are licensed. All information is as of October 2026; the current version is v0.11.4 from 21 September 2026.

Note: This article is not legal advice. It reflects the licence text and the vendor's explanations. For binding interpretations in individual cases, the full licence text, the vendor or legal counsel are authoritative.

Table of Contents

1. The licence at a glance
2. Licence history: from MIT to the Open WebUI License
3. What the branding clause covers
4. Allowed and not allowed without an enterprise licence
5. The 50-user threshold with examples
6. What the enterprise licence offers
7. Forks on a BSD-3 basis
8. Comparison with AnythingLLM and LibreChat
9. Options for businesses
10. Our approach at WZ-IT
11. Further guides

The licence at a glance

Sources: LICENSE, licence page in the documentation, CHANGELOG.

Licence history: from MIT to the Open WebUI License

Open WebUI has changed its licence twice and revised the text several times since. Which licence applies to which code is defined by commit in the LICENSE_HISTORY file in the repository.

The dates come from the CHANGELOG, the commit history of the LICENSE file and the licence files of the respective release tags. The documentation gives 19 April 2025 as the effective date for v0.6.6. That is the date of the licence change in the repository; the release itself shipped on 5 May 2025.

Two changes to the 2025 wording are relevant for businesses:

• Written permission. In v0.6.6, exception (ii) was only open to official contributors with a substantive, merged code change. Since v0.9.0, the licence text refers generally to prior written permission from the copyright holder. The documentation still describes this permission as an exception for "substantive contributors" that is granted only case by case.
• Contributor License Agreement. According to the CLA, contributors grant Open WebUI Inc. a perpetual, worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free licence to use and commercialise their contribution under any terms. This affects companies that want to submit their own extensions upstream.

How this change fits into the wider series of licence changes in open source projects is covered in the open source licence change chronicle.

What the branding clause covers

Clause 4 of the licence prohibits altering, removing, obscuring or replacing any "Open WebUI" branding. This includes the name, the logo and any visual, textual or symbolic identifiers of the software and its interfaces, in any deployment or distribution. The clause is worded as a "material condition": according to the licence text, violating it is a material breach.

Three cases are exempt:

All other BSD-3-Clause rights remain: the code may be used, modified, extended and redistributed, including commercially. The licence does not restrict who uses Open WebUI for what, only whether it remains recognisable as Open WebUI.

The licence page specifies where the branding must remain: name and logo in their original locations, such as the header, sidebar, login screen and About dialog. Logos, wordmarks, About and Help links and credits screens must remain unmodified and fully visible.

Allowed and not allowed without an enterprise licence

The Open WebUI licence page contains two tables with typical scenarios. In summary:

Source: Open WebUI License, section "Branding, Attribution, and Customization Guidelines".

Two points are often misjudged in practice:

• Co-branding is excluded. A company logo on equal footing next to Open WebUI is not allowed, even if the Open WebUI logo stays visible. Only a clearly subordinate notice is permitted.
• Public forks and paid SaaS offerings that keep the branding should, according to the licence page, state prominently that they are a customised fork not maintained by the official Open WebUI team.

According to the licence page, anyone planning a specific design can send a screenshot or mock-up to the vendor for review before launch.

The 50-user threshold with examples

The licence defines end users as "individual natural persons with direct access to the application". The threshold is at most 50 such persons within any rolling 30-day period. The text refers to the deployment or distribution ("deployments or distributions").

It is important to understand what the threshold does not mean: it is not a user cap for free use. With the original branding there is no user limit. The 50 only determines whether the branding may be changed without permission or an enterprise licence.

The examples are schematic and only apply the licence wording. Some questions are not explicitly answered by the text:

• Active or provisioned? The licence does not say whether an account counts if it was not used within the 30 days. The wording refers to direct access, not actual use, and does not distinguish between users and administrators.
• API access. Services, scripts and integrations using the Open WebUI API are not natural persons. Whether people behind such an integration count as end users is left open.
• Multiple instances. The text does not say whether several deployments of the same organisation are counted separately. The licence page refers to "50+ users, aggregate".

Anyone who wants to change the branding and gets close to the threshold should clarify the interpretation with Open WebUI in advance. The vendor explicitly invites this on the licence page.

What the enterprise licence offers

The enterprise licence is the way to run Open WebUI under your own brand. According to the enterprise page, standard use, meaning internal use with the original branding exactly intact, is free. An enterprise licence is required for white-labelling, rebranding, changes to the branding and for enterprise-exclusive offerings such as Terminals, the orchestration layer for isolated per-user workspaces.

As of October 2026. Requests go through the sales form, which asks for the expected number of users in bands from 1-50 to over 5,000. According to the vendor, Open WebUI provides guidance but not implementation services; for that it refers to system integrators or in-house teams.

Agencies, service providers and resellers have a separate rule: they should not contact sales directly but apply through the partner programme. Companies younger than five years are generally not eligible. If a service provider has an end customer ready to purchase an enterprise licence, it can make the introduction directly.

Forks on a BSD-3 basis

Open WebUI points out the alternative itself: code up to and including v0.6.5 is BSD-3-Clause, and "anyone can still fork from v0.6.5 with zero restrictions" (licence page). Such a fork may be renamed and placed under its own terms as long as the BSD-3 notice is retained.

Such forks exist, mainly in the public sector:

As of 2 October 2026, checked against the repositories. The Albert Conversation example shows the risk: a fork only lives as long as its maintainer keeps it going. Other publicly known derivatives, such as GovChat-NL, are based on newer versions and carry the Open WebUI License.

For businesses, a fork of their own is rarely economical. The reasons:

• No upstream updates. More than 17 months of development have gone into the versions from v0.6.5 to v0.11.4. These changes are under the Open WebUI License and cannot be adopted without the branding requirement.
• Security fixes are your own job. Vulnerabilities fixed after April 2025 have to be backported or rebuilt by the fork maintainer.
• Ongoing development capacity. A fork is a software product of its own with its own release and test process.

Comparison with AnythingLLM and LibreChat

Anyone who needs custom branding without a licence negotiation can turn to projects under a standard licence. Two widely used alternatives are MIT licensed:

MIT only requires that the copyright and licence notice is retained in copies. Name, logo and interface may be adapted freely.

The licence is only one criterion, though. According to our feature overview, Open WebUI offers knowledge bases with hybrid search, group and permission management, channels, notes and an OpenAI-compatible API, among other things. Whether AnythingLLM is a better fit for a given use case is covered in the detailed Open WebUI vs. AnythingLLM comparison. Operating AnythingLLM is described on the AnythingLLM page.

Options for businesses

The licence text leaves four routes. Which one fits depends mainly on whether custom branding is really needed.

A fifth route, your own fork based on v0.6.5, is legally open but, given the lack of updates and security fixes, only sensible with an in-house development team.

In practice it is worth asking why custom branding is wanted. Often the aim is for employees to recognise the tool as approved. That can be achieved without swapping logos: through your own domain, sign-in via company SSO, a subordinate notice in the footer and internal communication. How an approved internal alternative replaces the use of private AI accounts is described in the article on shadow AI in companies.

Regardless of the licence, further obligations apply when using AI interfaces, such as the transparency obligations of the AI Act, see AI labelling obligation under Article 50.

Our approach at WZ-IT

WZ-IT provides hosting and operations for Open WebUI in German data centres, from €129.90 excl. VAT per workload and month. In our deployments the Open WebUI branding stays visible, and we do not present Open WebUI as our own product.

Before a rollout we clarify with you:

1. User base. How many people get access, internally and externally, and how will that number develop?
2. Branding requirements. Are your own domain, SSO and a footer notice sufficient, or is genuine white-labelling needed? In the latter case an enterprise licence directly from the vendor is required, or an alternative such as AnythingLLM is a better fit.
3. Customisations. We implement custom features, tools and integrations with the branding intact.
4. Operations. Updates, backups, monitoring and model connections, whether European APIs or your own inference via LLM hosting.

Anyone who wants to run Open WebUI locally with their own models inside their own network can use it on the AI Cube. The same licence rules apply there. We do not provide legal advice on the licence; we assess the project technically and name the points to be clarified with the vendor or legal counsel.

Further guides

• Hosting and operations for Open WebUI, features, scope of operations and prices.
• Open WebUI vs. AnythingLLM, the detailed comparison including the licensing model.
• Install Open WebUI on Linux, installer script with Docker and Caddy.
• Onyx self-hosted, installation and comparison with Open WebUI.
• vLLM, Ollama and llama.cpp compared, which inference server fits under Open WebUI.
• Open source licence changes, the chronicle and what operators need to do.
• Shadow AI in companies, what an approved internal alternative looks like.
• AI solutions from WZ-IT, the hub with all offerings for local AI and LLM operations.

Have Open WebUI run in line with its licence? We run Open WebUI with the original branding visible, including updates, backups and monitoring, and clarify user base and branding requirements before rollout. Book a meeting

Sources

• Open WebUI, LICENSE (current version)
• Open WebUI, LICENSE_HISTORY
• Open WebUI, Contributor License Agreement
• Open WebUI, commit history of the LICENSE file
• Open WebUI, commit 60d84a3: branding clause
• Open WebUI, commit a76068d: switch to BSD-3-Clause
• Open WebUI, CHANGELOG
• Open WebUI, release v0.6.6
• Open WebUI, release v0.11.4
• Open WebUI Docs, Open WebUI License
• Open WebUI Docs, Open WebUI for Enterprise
• Open WebUI Docs, Support & SLAs
• Open WebUI Docs, Partners & Agencies
• Open WebUI Docs, Terminals
• Open WebUI, enterprise sales contact
• Etalab, Albert Conversation (GitHub)
• Government of Canada, CanChat (GitHub)
• GovChat-NL (GitHub)
• AnythingLLM, licence (MIT)
• LibreChat, licence (MIT)