EMMA vs Open WebUI
A self-hosted AI platform, or a companion on your desktop.
Open WebUI is a powerful self-hosted AI platform, free, extensible and built for many users. If you run a home server or a team, it's excellent. EMMA is for one person: a desktop app you install with a double-click, that becomes your AI and does things on your computer.
Side by side
| EMMA | Open WebUI | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A private AI companion that lives on your computer: one ongoing relationship rather than a list of chats. | A self-hosted web interface for local and cloud models (Ollama, OpenAI, Anthropic and compatible services), extensible with Python. |
| Price | £149 once, VAT included. A 60-day free trial with everything unlocked first; when it ends nothing is deleted. | Free to self-host; an enterprise offering is available. |
| Source code | Closed. The privacy is something you test (unplug her; read her audit log), not something you read the code for. | The Open WebUI License, with a requirement to keep the "Open WebUI" branding. |
| Runs on | Windows, Linux (.deb / AppImage) and macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel). The Mac build is behind the other two right now: it's on 1.11.6, and the current version follows soon. Thinks with Ollama, or llama.cpp, LM Studio, vLLM or anything that speaks the OpenAI API. | Anywhere Docker or Python 3.11+ runs, used through a web browser. |
| Where your conversations live | On your machine, encrypted at rest (AES-256), key in your OS keyring. No account, no server. | On the server you host it on; with a cloud model, that provider's servers. |
| Remembers you between chats | Yes, by design: facts about you, your history, people in your life and your goals, carried across years and across model swaps. You can see every fact, and forget any of it. | Yes: its README lists persistent memory of facts across conversations. |
| Works on your computer for you | Yes: files, apps, commands, the browser, the screen. Gated by a safety dial (full / ask first / locked) and folders she may never touch. | Through tools and Python functions you add. |
| Seeing and undoing what it did | Per-action undo, a panic stop, and a tamper-evident log of every action she has ever taken. | Role-based access control and user groups for administrators. |
| Voice | She speaks, and she hears you, both on your machine. | Yes: hands-free voice and video calls, with several speech-to-text providers. |
| Also | Dream Mode (she goes over your day overnight), Her Studio (record video and podcasts), your phone on the home Wi-Fi, "Is this a scam?", offline Wikipedia, English / German / Dutch. | RAG over nine vector databases, web search, multi-user with SSO, a community library of prompts and tools. |
Where Open WebUI is the better choice
- It's free, and very extensible.
- Many users, one server. Accounts, roles and groups; EMMA is one person's AI on one computer.
- Cloud models and huge flexibility: dozens of search providers, vector databases and community tools.
- It remembers too. Open WebUI has a memory feature; this page won't pretend otherwise.
Where EMMA is different
- No server to run. A normal installer on Windows, Linux or macOS; no Docker, no port to keep open, no admin panel.
- She works on the computer she's on: files, apps, the screen, with a safety dial, undo, a panic stop and an audit log of every action.
- Encrypted at rest by default, with a recovery key, and a whole brain you can carry to a new machine as one Soul File.
- A presence, not a platform: Dream Mode, a morning briefing, Her Studio, your phone on the home Wi-Fi.
Where the Open WebUI column comes from
Try her yourself
Sixty days, everything unlocked, no card, no account. When the trial ends nothing is deleted.