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AI Chatbots & Assistants Comparison

Microsoft Copilot vs. Open WebUI

At a glance

At a glance

Microsoft Copilot

Best for

Best for people who work inside Microsoft 365 and Windows.

  • Small and mid-sized
  • Enterprise

Open WebUI

Best for

Best for teams that want one self-hosted chat front end over local and cloud models, with the data staying on their own infrastructure.

  • Freelancers
  • Small and mid-sized
  • Enterprise

Cataleo does not name a winner. Both statements come from the vendors themselves.

Full Comparison

Criterion Microsoft Copilot Open WebUI
Starting price Free in Windows and Edge; Copilot Pro ~$20 / month Microsoft 365 Copilot around $30 per user per month. Free, self-hosted; enterprise licence quoted The community edition is free to deploy as-is with the Open WebUI branding kept. An enterprise licence is required to white-label or rebrand it or to use enterprise-only features, and is quoted against the number of seats.
Free trial Free in Windows and Edge Free community edition, self-hosted
Commercial use Yes Not stated
Output Assistant with access to Office files, email and calendar A self-hosted chat interface over local and cloud models
API N/A Yes, a REST API with an OpenAI-compatible chat completions endpoint and Anthropic-compatible messages endpoints
Hosting Not stated Self-hosted by pip, uv, Docker or Kubernetes; runs fully offline and in air-gapped environments
Ecosystem Microsoft 365 and Windows, with Edge integration Self-hosted web interface with a plugin and tool marketplace, plus companion projects Open Terminal for code execution, oikb for knowledge-base sync and mcpo for MCP-to-OpenAPI proxying
Live web search and sources Yes, web search built in Yes, through dozens of providers including SearXNG, Google PSE, Brave Search, Kagi, Mojeek, Tavily, Perplexity and Firecrawl, with results injected into the conversation
Files and long documents Yes, direct access to Office files, email and calendar Yes, local retrieval backed by nine vector databases, with several content-extraction engines and hybrid BM25 plus vector search with reranking
Images, voice and video Yes, image generation via Designer, plus Copilot Voice and Copilot Vision Image generation through DALL-E, Gemini, ComfyUI and AUTOMATIC1111, plus hands-free voice and video calls with a choice of speech-to-text and text-to-speech engines
Coding help Can help with code, but general-purpose rather than a coding tool Open Terminal adds sandboxed files, a shell, code execution, previews and artifacts inside the chat
Model choice No model selector; runs on OpenAI models with a Think Deeper mode Yes, and it is the point: Ollama for local models and any OpenAI-compatible API, including LM Studio, GroqCloud, Mistral, OpenRouter and vLLM, mixed locally or in the cloud
Deployment Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based Browser-based, On-premise
Support Not stated Community forum
Onboarding Not stated Documentation and knowledge base
Company size Small and mid-sized, Enterprise more entries Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise
Integrations Not stated Ollama, OpenAI, Anthropic, LM Studio, GroqCloud, Mistral, OpenRouter, vLLM, ComfyUI, AUTOMATIC1111, SearXNG, Brave Search, Kagi, Tavily, Firecrawl, Docker, Kubernetes

Compare more tools

Row where the values differ The small markers point at the lower number, the longer list or the stated feature. They describe the data, they are not a verdict.

The short version

Key Differences

  • Starting price Microsoft Copilot Free in Windows and Edge; Copilot Pro ~$20 / month Open WebUI Free, self-hosted; enterprise licence quoted
  • Free trial Microsoft Copilot Free in Windows and Edge Open WebUI Free community edition, self-hosted
  • Deployment Microsoft Copilot Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based Open WebUI Browser-based, On-premise
  • Company size Microsoft Copilot Small and mid-sized, Enterprise Open WebUI Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise
  • Output Microsoft Copilot Assistant with access to Office files, email and calendar Open WebUI A self-hosted chat interface over local and cloud models

Every line is one datapoint from the table above, picked automatically. Nothing here is written text.

The trade-offs

Strengths and Limitations

Microsoft Copilot

Strengths

  • Direct access to your Office files, email and calendar
  • Deep Microsoft 365 and Windows integration
  • Free in Windows and Edge

Limitations

  • Most value inside the Microsoft ecosystem
  • Consumer and enterprise tiers can confuse

Open WebUI

Strengths

  • Runs entirely on your own infrastructure, including fully offline and air-gapped
  • One interface over local Ollama models and any OpenAI-compatible API
  • Granular role-based access control and user groups for teams
  • Free to deploy as-is, with no seat cost
  • Its own OpenAI-compatible API, so other applications can call through it

Limitations

  • No hosted service: you run, secure and upgrade the infrastructure yourself
  • White-labelling or rebranding requires a quoted enterprise licence, and the community licence requires keeping the Open WebUI branding
  • Enterprise pricing is not published

Plans

Pricing

Microsoft Copilot

  • Free $0 In Windows and Edge.
  • Copilot Pro ~$20 Per month.
  • Microsoft 365 Copilot ~$30 Per user per month.
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Open WebUI

  • Community $0 Free to deploy as-is, self-hosted, with the Open WebUI branding preserved.
  • Enterprise Not stated Quoted against the number of seats. Adds white-labelling, multi-node high availability, LDAP, Active Directory and SSO, audit logs and dedicated support.
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What users say

Review Scores · opens after launch

Microsoft Copilot

Ease of use
Not rated yet
User interface
Not rated yet
Onboarding
Not rated yet
Support and service
Not rated yet
Value for money
Not rated yet
Features
Not rated yet

No reviews yet. Be the first to review this tool. Every review is checked for fairness before it appears, and the vendor cannot have one removed.

Open WebUI

Ease of use
Not rated yet
User interface
Not rated yet
Onboarding
Not rated yet
Support and service
Not rated yet
Value for money
Not rated yet
Features
Not rated yet

No reviews yet. Be the first to review this tool. Every review is checked for fairness before it appears, and the vendor cannot have one removed.

Where this comes from

Where this comes from

Microsoft Copilot https://copilot.microsoft.com · no check date recorded yet

Open WebUI https://openwebui.com · checked against the official source on 2026-09-13

This table lists factual criteria taken from information the vendors publish themselves. For how we put it together, see the methodology.