Open WebUI on Google Cloud Run

Open WebUI is a self-hosted AI interface providing a polished ChatGPT-style frontend for Ollama, OpenAI-compatible APIs, and dozens of other LLM providers. This module deploys Open WebUI on Cloud Run v2 on top of the App_CloudRun foundation, which provisions and manages the shared Google Cloud infrastructure.

This guide focuses on the cloud services Open WebUI uses and how to explore and operate them from the Google Cloud Console and the command line. For the mechanics common to every Cloud Run application — service identity, ingress and load balancing, scaling and concurrency, CI/CD, Cloud Armor, IAP, Binary Authorization, VPC Service Controls, backups, and the deployment lifecycle — refer to the App_CloudRun foundation guide rather than repeating them here.

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1. Overview

Open WebUI runs as a Python web container on Cloud Run v2. The deployment wires together a focused set of Google Cloud services:

Capability	Google Cloud service	Notes
Compute	Cloud Run v2	Python web service, 2 vCPU / 4 GiB by default, request-based autoscaling
Database	Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL 15	Required — sessions, conversations, and RAG data all live here
Shared files	Filestore (NFS)	Optional — needed only when multiple instances share uploaded files
Object storage	Cloud Storage	A dedicated data bucket provisioned automatically
Secrets	Secret Manager	Auto-generated WEBUI_SECRET_KEY and database password
Ingress	Cloud Run URL / Cloud Load Balancing	Default run.app URL, optional external HTTPS load balancer + custom domain

Sensible defaults worth knowing up front:

• PostgreSQL 15 is required. Open WebUI does not support MySQL or any other engine; the database type is fixed internally.
• No Redis. Open WebUI persists sessions and all application state in PostgreSQL. The enable_redis variable defaults to false and no Redis environment variables are injected.
• WEBUI_SECRET_KEY is auto-generated and stored in Secret Manager. It signs all user sessions; rotating it invalidates every active session simultaneously. Treat it as immutable after first use.
• New users require admin approval by default. default_user_role = "pending" means self-registered accounts cannot access the UI until an admin promotes them.
• Scale-to-zero is enabled. min_instance_count defaults to 0; set it to 1 for a warm instance in interactive team deployments.
• Health probes target /health. Open WebUI exposes this path natively; both startup and liveness probes use HTTP against it.
• DATABASE_URL is assembled automatically. The custom entrypoint constructs it from the platform-injected DB_* environment variables — do not set it manually.
• Gen2 execution environment is required for NFS mounts and Direct VPC Egress.

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2. Google Cloud Services & How to Explore Them

All commands assume PROJECT and REGION are set. Service and resource names are reported in the deployment Outputs.

A. Cloud Run — the Open WebUI service

Open WebUI runs as a Cloud Run v2 service that autoscales by request load between the minimum and maximum instance counts. Each deployment creates an immutable revision; traffic can be split across revisions for safe rollouts.

• Console: Cloud Run → select the service for revisions, traffic, logs, and metrics.
• CLI:

  gcloud run services list --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"
  gcloud run services describe <service-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"
  gcloud run revisions list --service <service-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"

See App_CloudRun for scaling, concurrency, execution environment, and traffic splitting.

B. Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL 15

Open WebUI stores all application data — user accounts, conversations, RAG indices, and uploaded document embeddings — in a managed Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL 15 instance. The service connects privately through the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy over a Unix socket (no public IP). On first deploy an initialization Job creates the application database and user.

• Console: SQL → select the instance for connections, backups, flags, metrics.
• CLI:

  gcloud sql instances list --project "$PROJECT"
  gcloud sql instances describe <instance-name> --project "$PROJECT"
  gcloud sql connect <instance-name> --user=<db-user> --database=<db-name> \
    --project "$PROJECT"

The instance name, database, user, and password secret are in the Outputs. See App_CloudRun for the connection model, backups, and password rotation.

C. Cloud Storage

A dedicated Cloud Storage bucket (openwebui-data) is provisioned automatically for Open WebUI's backend data directory. The workload service account is granted access automatically.

• Console: Cloud Storage → Buckets.
• CLI:

  gcloud storage buckets list --project "$PROJECT"
  gcloud storage ls gs://<data-bucket>/          # bucket name is in the Outputs

See App_CloudRun for GCS Fuse and CMEK options.

D. Filestore (NFS) — optional shared storage

NFS is enabled by default. It provides shared persistent storage across all instances, which is important when running more than one instance and uploaded files must be visible everywhere. NFS requires the Gen2 execution environment.

• Console: Filestore → Instances.
• CLI:

  gcloud filestore instances list --project "$PROJECT"

See App_CloudRun for the NFS mount and Gen2 requirements.

E. Secret Manager

WEBUI_SECRET_KEY (session signing key) and the database password are stored in Secret Manager and injected into the service at runtime; plaintext never appears in configuration or logs.

• Console: Security → Secret Manager.
• CLI:

  gcloud secrets list --project "$PROJECT"
  gcloud secrets versions access latest --secret=<secret-name> --project "$PROJECT"

See App_CloudRun for injection and rotation details.

F. Networking & ingress

The service is reachable at its run.app URL by default. An external HTTPS load balancer with a custom domain, Cloud CDN, and Cloud Armor can be layered on; ingress settings and VPC egress control connectivity.

• Console: Cloud Run (service URL); Network services → Load balancing.
• CLI:

  gcloud run services describe <service-name> --region "$REGION" \
    --format='value(status.url)'
  gcloud compute addresses list --project "$PROJECT"

See App_CloudRun.

G. Cloud Logging & Monitoring

Container logs flow to Cloud Logging; Cloud Run and Cloud SQL metrics flow to Cloud Monitoring, with optional uptime checks and alert policies.

• Console: Logging → Logs Explorer; Monitoring → Dashboards / Alerting.
• CLI:

  gcloud run services logs read <service-name> \
    --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION" --limit 50

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3. Open WebUI Application Behaviour

• First-deploy database setup. An initialization Job (db-init) runs postgres:15-alpine against the Cloud SQL instance through the Auth Proxy. It idempotently creates the application database and user before the service starts.
• Database migrations on start. Open WebUI runs its own Alembic schema migrations on every startup, so upgrading application_version applies any new schema changes automatically. On first boot this can take 30–60 seconds.
• DATABASE_URL assembly. The custom entrypoint (entrypoint.sh) assembles the DATABASE_URL from the platform-injected DB_HOST, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD, and DB_NAME environment variables. The password is URL-encoded to handle special characters. Do not override DATABASE_URL directly.
• WEBUI_SECRET_KEY is immutable. The key signs all user sessions. Rotating it immediately logs out every active user and invalidates all remember-me tokens. Treat it as permanent after the first login.
• AI backend connection. Open WebUI connects to an Ollama instance or an OpenAI-compatible API at startup. If neither ollama_base_url nor openai_api_base_url is configured, the UI starts but has no AI backend — all model inference requests fail. Supply API keys (e.g. OPENAI_API_KEY) via secret_environment_variables, not environment_variables.
• User registration flow. With default_user_role = "pending" (the default) all self-registered accounts must be promoted by an admin before they can use the UI. The first admin account must be created directly through the signup page on first boot.
• Health path. Both startup and liveness probes use HTTP against /health, which returns 200 once the application and database connection are ready. The startup probe allows up to 300 seconds (30 failures × 10-second period) for first-boot migration to complete.

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4. Configuration Variables

Variables are grouped exactly as they appear on the deployment platform. Only settings specific to or notable for Open WebUI are listed; every other input is inherited from App_CloudRun with its standard behaviour.

Group 1 — Project & Identity

Variable	Default	Description
project_id	(required)	Target Google Cloud project.
region	us-central1	Region for the service and regional resources.

Group 2 — Deployment Environment

Variable	Default	Description
tenant_deployment_id	demo	Short suffix that makes resource names unique per environment.
support_users	[]	Emails granted project access and monitoring alerts.
resource_labels	{}	Labels applied to all resources.

Group 3 — Application Identity

Variable	Default	Description
application_name	openwebui	Base name for resources. Do not change after first deploy.
display_name	Open WebUI	Friendly name shown in the Console.
description	Open WebUI — self-hosted AI interface for Ollama and OpenAI-compatible APIs	Service description.
application_version	latest	Open WebUI image version tag. Pin to a specific release in production.

Group 4 — Runtime & Scaling

Variable	Default	Description
deploy_application	true	Set false to provision infrastructure only.
cpu_limit	2000m	CPU per instance; 2 vCPU recommended for RAG workloads.
memory_limit	4Gi	Memory per instance; 4 GiB recommended (RAG pipelines can use 3–6 GiB).
min_instance_count	0	Minimum instances; set 1 to keep a warm instance for interactive use.
max_instance_count	3	Maximum instances.
container_port	8080	Open WebUI's HTTP port (matches the official image's EXPOSE).
execution_environment	gen2	Gen2 required for NFS mounts and Direct VPC Egress.
timeout_seconds	300	Max request duration. Increase to 600–3600 for document ingestion or slow LLM backends.
enable_cloudsql_volume	true	Cloud SQL Auth Proxy sidecar — must be true when connecting to Cloud SQL.
enable_image_mirroring	true	Mirror the Open WebUI image into Artifact Registry (avoids GHCR rate limits).
traffic_split	[]	Canary/blue-green traffic allocation across revisions.

Group 5 — Open WebUI Settings & Access

Variable	Default	Description
ollama_base_url	""	Base URL for the Ollama backend (e.g. http://ollama:11434). Leave empty if not using Ollama directly.
openai_api_base_url	""	Base URL for an OpenAI-compatible API (e.g. https://api.openai.com/v1). Must include /v1 suffix.
default_user_role	pending	Role assigned to new self-registered accounts. pending requires admin approval; user grants immediate access.
enable_signup	true	Allow the signup page. Set false after admin accounts are created in production.
webui_auth	true	Enable the login form. Only set false for single-user or fully air-gapped deployments.
ingress_settings	all	Which traffic sources may reach the service (all, internal, internal-and-cloud-load-balancing).
vpc_egress_setting	PRIVATE_RANGES_ONLY	How outbound traffic is routed through the VPC connector.
enable_iap	false	Require Google sign-in via Identity-Aware Proxy.
iap_authorized_users / iap_authorized_groups	[]	Who may access through IAP.

Group 6 — Environment Variables & Secrets

Variable	Default	Description
environment_variables	{}	Extra non-secret settings. Do not override DATABASE_URL or WEBUI_SECRET_KEY.
secret_environment_variables	{}	Map of env var → Secret Manager secret name. Use for OPENAI_API_KEY and similar sensitive values.
secret_propagation_delay	30	Seconds to wait after secret creation before proceeding.
secret_rotation_period	2592000s	Secret Manager rotation notification frequency.

Group 7 — Backup & Restore

Variable	Default	Description
backup_schedule	0 2 * * *	Automated backup cron (UTC).
backup_retention_days	7	Retention; raise for production/compliance.
enable_backup_import / backup_source / backup_uri / backup_format	restore options	Restore from a backup on deploy.

Group 8 — CI/CD & Binary Authorization

Standard App_CloudRun Cloud Build / Cloud Deploy integration — see App_CloudRun. Key inputs: enable_cicd_trigger, github_repository_url, github_token, enable_cloud_deploy, enable_binary_authorization.

Group 9 — Custom SQL

enable_custom_sql_scripts, custom_sql_scripts_bucket, custom_sql_scripts_path, custom_sql_scripts_use_root — run SQL from a GCS bucket after provisioning. See App_CloudRun.

Group 10 — Load Balancer, CDN & Image Retention

Variable	Default	Description
enable_cloud_armor	false	Provision Global HTTPS LB + Cloud Armor WAF.
admin_ip_ranges	[]	CIDR ranges exempted from WAF rules.
application_domains	[]	Custom hostnames for the external load balancer.
enable_cdn	false	Enable Cloud CDN on the LB backend.
max_images_to_retain / delete_untagged_images / image_retention_days	(set)	Artifact Registry cleanup policy.

Group 11 — Storage & Filesystem

Variable	Default	Description
enable_nfs	true	Shared Filestore volume — needed when multiple instances share uploaded files.
nfs_mount_path	/mnt/nfs	Mount path inside the container.
create_cloud_storage	true	Provision the data bucket.
storage_buckets	[]	Additional buckets beyond the automatically provisioned data bucket.
gcs_volumes	[]	GCS Fuse mounts for extra bucket-backed directories.
manage_storage_kms_iam / enable_artifact_registry_cmek	false	CMEK options.

Group 12 — Database Backend

Variable	Default	Description
database_type	POSTGRES_15	Fixed — Open WebUI requires PostgreSQL 15.
db_name	openwebui_db	Database name. Immutable after first deploy.
db_user	openwebui_user	Application user. Immutable after first deploy.
database_password_length	32	Generated password length (16–64).
enable_auto_password_rotation	false	Zero-downtime DB password rotation.

Group 13 — Jobs & Scheduled Tasks

Variable	Default	Description
initialization_jobs	[]	Leave empty to use the built-in db-init job.
cron_jobs	[]	Open WebUI has no required scheduled commands; add any app-specific recurring tasks here.

Group 14 — Observability & Health

Variable	Default	Description
startup_probe	HTTP /health, 30s delay, 5s timeout, 10s period, 30 retries	Allows up to ~5 minutes for first-boot startup.
liveness_probe	HTTP /health, 60s delay, 5s timeout, 30s period, 3 retries	Liveness probe.
uptime_check_config	{ enabled=false, path="/health" }	Cloud Monitoring uptime check; disabled by default.
alert_policies	[]	Metric alert policies.

Group 21 — Redis Cache

Variable	Default	Description
enable_redis	false	Redis is not needed — Open WebUI persists all state in PostgreSQL.
redis_host	""	Redis endpoint (only relevant if enable_redis is set to true).

Group 22 — VPC Service Controls & Audit Logging

Variable	Default	Description
enable_vpc_sc	false	Enforce a VPC-SC perimeter (requires organization_id).
vpc_cidr_ranges / vpc_sc_dry_run	(set)	Access level CIDRs / dry-run mode.
enable_audit_logging	false	Detailed Cloud Audit Logs.

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5. Outputs

Returned on a successful deployment — the quickest way to locate and explore the running resources.

Output	Description
service_name	Cloud Run service name.
service_url	Default run.app URL of the service.
service_location	Region the service runs in.
stage_services	Stage-specific service URLs (Cloud Deploy).
load_balancer_ip / load_balancer_url	External HTTPS load balancer IP / URL (when enabled).
database_instance_name	Cloud SQL instance name.
database_name / database_user	Application database name / user.
database_password_secret	Secret Manager secret holding the DB password.
database_host / database_port	DB endpoint / port.
storage_buckets	Created Cloud Storage buckets.
network_name / network_exists / regions	VPC network, presence, regions.
container_image / container_registry	Deployed image and Artifact Registry repo.
monitoring_enabled / monitoring_notification_channels / uptime_check_names	Monitoring status, channels, uptime checks.
initialization_jobs	Names of the setup jobs.
deployment_id / tenant_id / resource_prefix	Naming identifiers.
project_id / project_number	Project identifiers.
cicd_enabled / github_repository_url / github_repository_owner / github_repository_name / cicd_configuration	CI/CD status and details.
artifact_registry_repository / cloudbuild_trigger_name / cloudbuild_trigger_id	Registry and build trigger.
vpc_sc_enabled / vpc_sc_perimeter_name / vpc_sc_dry_run_mode	VPC-SC status.
audit_logging_enabled / artifact_registry_cmek_enabled	Audit logging and CMEK status.

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6. Configuration Pitfalls & Sensible Defaults

Risk: Critical (data loss / outage / security) — High (service degraded) — Medium (cost or partial degradation) — Low (minor).

Setting	Sensible value	Risk	Consequence if wrong
enable_cloudsql_volume	true	Critical	Disabling breaks all database connections when using Cloud SQL. Only disable when connecting to an external PostgreSQL over TCP.
WEBUI_SECRET_KEY (auto-generated)	immutable after first use	Critical	Rotating the key immediately logs out every active user and invalidates all remember-me tokens.
webui_auth	true	Critical	Disabling removes the login form — anyone who can reach the URL has full admin access with no credentials.
db_name / db_user	set once	Critical	Immutable after first deploy; changing recreates the database/user and destroys all data.
enable_backup_import	false unless restoring	Critical	Enabling without a valid backup_uri fails the import job.
database_type (fixed)	POSTGRES_15	Critical	Open WebUI requires PostgreSQL; any other engine breaks migrations and startup.
ollama_base_url / openai_api_base_url	at least one set	High	Without a backend URL, Open WebUI starts but all model inference requests fail immediately.
default_user_role	pending	High	user auto-approves all self-registrations; on a publicly exposed service this allows unrestricted sign-up.
enable_signup	true (set false in prod after onboarding)	High	Combined with default_user_role = "user", any visitor can self-register and access all models.
memory_limit	4Gi	High	RAG pipelines can consume 3–6 GiB under load; insufficient memory causes OOM kills mid-ingestion.
backup_schedule	0 2 * * *	High	Without automated backups, the PostgreSQL database (users, conversations, RAG data) is unprotected.
ingress_settings	restrict in prod	High	all exposes the UI to the public internet — combine with webui_auth = true and default_user_role = "pending".
execution_environment	gen2	High	NFS mounts and Direct VPC Egress are not supported in gen1.
application_version	pinned release in prod	Medium	latest risks an unintended upgrade with a schema change that crashes startup.
min_instance_count	1 for interactive use	Medium	0 adds 20–40 s cold-start latency when the first request arrives.
enable_nfs	true when max_instance_count > 1	Medium	Without shared storage, uploaded files are instance-local and invisible to other replicas.
timeout_seconds	300 (raise for RAG/LLM)	Medium	Document ingestion and large model responses are cut off at the Cloud Run timeout.
enable_iap / enable_cloud_armor	enable for production	Medium	Without them, the UI is publicly reachable with only Open WebUI's built-in auth as a gate.

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For the foundation behaviour referenced throughout — service identity, scaling and concurrency, ingress and load balancing, CI/CD, Cloud Armor, IAP, Binary Authorization, VPC-SC, backups, and image mirroring — see App_CloudRun. Open WebUI-specific application configuration shared with the GKE variant is described in OpenWebUI_Common.