OpenChat

OpenChat is an open source, self-hosted, AI User Interface with the goal of developing the most feature rich, free, AI User Interface.

Get Started

Local

1. Clone and install dependencies

   git clone https://github.com/openchatui/openchat.git
   cd openchat
   npm install

2. Create your environment file

   cp .env.example .env

3. Initialize database and run

   Dev mode (hot reload):

   npm run db:push
   npm run dev

   Production-like run:

   npm run serve   # runs migrations, builds, and starts Next.js

Now open http://localhost:3000.

Note

• DB selection is controlled by DB (sqlite or postgres).
• For PostgreSQL set DB=postgres and DATABASE_URL (or POSTGRES_URL / POSTGRES_DIRECT_URL) in .env.

Docker (single container)

Pull and run with defaults (port 3000 inside the container):

docker pull ghcr.io/openchatui/openchatui:latest
docker run --name openchat \
  -p 3000:3000 \
  -e PORT=3000 \
  -e AUTH_URL="http://localhost:3000" \
  -e AUTH_SECRET="$(openssl rand -base64 32)" \
  -v "$(pwd)/data:/app/data" \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  ghcr.io/openchatui/openchatui:latest

Tip

• Change the host port by editing the -p flag (e.g., -p 3001:3001 together with -e PORT=3001).
• If you prefer PostgreSQL, add -e DB=postgres -e DATABASE_URL=postgresql://user:pass@host:5432/dbname.
• Optional (persist SQLite outside the image): mount a host folder at /app/data and set SQLITE_URL=file:/app/data/openchat.db (DB defaults to sqlite in the image). Avoid mounting /prisma to prevent overriding bundled migrations.
• The container will generate an AUTH_SECRET if not provided; set it for persistence across restarts.

Optional: Public landing (disable auth)

Set AUTH=false to allow unauthenticated users to access the public landing page while keeping the /admin area protected and requiring admin login.

Docker Compose

A ready-to-use docker-compose.yml is included. It maps port 3000 and persists SQLite data to ./data mounted at /app/data.

Minimal compose file:

services:
  openchat:
    image: ghcr.io/openchatui/openchatui:latest
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    environment:
      PORT: "3000"
      AUTH_URL: "http://localhost:3000"
      AUTH_SECRET: "<generate-a-secret>"
    volumes:
      - ./data:/app/data
    restart: unless-stopped

Start in the background:

docker compose up -d

Stop and remove the container:

docker compose down

Tip

• Change the external port by editing ports and the internal app port by environment: PORT and AUTH_URL.
• Optional (persist SQLite outside the image): mount ./data:/app/data and set SQLITE_URL=file:/app/data/openchat.db (DB defaults to sqlite in the image). Avoid mounting /prisma to prevent overriding bundled migrations.
• Switch to PostgreSQL: set DB=postgres and provide DATABASE_URL in environment. You can add a separate Postgres service if needed.

Features

• 🤖 Multi‑provider AI: OpenAI, OpenRouter, Ollama (via AI SDK)
• 🖼️ Image generation (OpenAI)
• 🎬 Video generation (Sora 2)
• 🎙️ Voice chat and TTS (e.g., ElevenLabs)
• 🌐 Browserless/headless web tools (automation via Browserbase)
• 📁 Drive and Docs: Google Drive/Google Docs integration or local documents
• 💬 Rich chat management: folders, tags, pinning, sharing
• 📝 Markdown with math (KaTeX) and code highlighting (Shiki)
• 📄 File and PDF reading
• 📘 Built‑in REST API docs (Swagger UI)
• 🔐 Authentication with sessions and roles
• 🗄️ SQLite or PostgreSQL via Prisma
• 🐳 Docker and Docker Compose support

Wishlist

• Documents: Tika, Docling, OCR (for drive)
• Image Gen: Midjourney, Auto1111, ComfyUI, Gemini, other providers
• Vision models and UI
• TTS/Voice: Deepgram
• AWS Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, Google Cloud integrations
• Code: Jupyeter, Pyodide
• Web: Playwright/Puppeteer, Google PSE, serpapi, firecrawl, bing, searchapi, etc.