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Open WebUI: SQLite or PostgreSQL

Open WebUI stores chats, users and settings in either SQLite (a single file in the open-webui volume) or the stack's shared PostgreSQL. SQLite allows only one writer at a time, so with several tabs or devices open you may see:

sqlalchemy.exc.OperationalError: (sqlite3.OperationalError) database is locked

PostgreSQL handles concurrent writes and puts the data in the same backup as the rest of the stack. Which one you get is controlled by OPEN_WEBUI_DATABASE in .env:

  • New installations default to postgres.
  • Existing installations stay on sqlite, deliberately. Open WebUI does not migrate data between databases — switching would give you an empty Open WebUI while your chats, users and tags stayed in webui.db.

Switching an existing installation

  1. Back up the volume first (check the exact name with docker volume ls | grep open-webui): 
    docker run --rm -v localai_open-webui:/data -v "$PWD":/backup alpine \
  tar czf /backup/open-webui-backup.tar.gz -C /data .
  2. Set OPEN_WEBUI_DATABASE=postgres in .env.
  3. Run make update (not just make restart) — the openwebui database is created by make install/make update, and pointing Open WebUI at a database that does not exist gives you a container that starts and then fails every request.
  4. Open WebUI comes up empty. If you want your old data, migrate it now, before registering an account — importing users into a schema that already has an admin can collide on the primary key or the unique email. Use a purpose-built tool: open-webui-postgres-migration or Open-WebUI-SQLite-migration. Prefer these over generic pgloader, which does not understand Open WebUI's JSON and blob columns.
  5. Log in with your migrated account. Only register a fresh admin if you deliberately want to start empty.

To revert, set OPEN_WEBUI_DATABASE=sqlite and run make restart — the original SQLite file is left untouched.

Note that uploaded files and the vector store live in the open-webui volume in either mode, so moving the database does not make Open WebUI stateless and does not put all of its data into your PostgreSQL backup.