The complete workflow, ready for your team.

How many pieces must be running before the first answer?

The difference between an afternoon of installing and an infrastructure project.

Skyller

The company subscribes and uses it. There is no server to size, no index to maintain, no sync process to watch and no model server to update — and the first useful question happens the same day.

Your own solution

The trial install is honest and fast: Open WebUI's documentation says the default setup uses a local SQLite database and an embedded vector store. What it says in the next sentence is what changes the numbers — before putting a second instance online you need PostgreSQL (SQLite is not supported for multi-instance), a client-server vector database, shared file storage, Redis required for session management and configuration sync, and a load balancer in front. n8n tells the same story from its side: at scale you switch the configuration to queue mode and configure execution-data pruning so the database does not degrade.

The demo goes up in an afternoon. The version that carries the whole company is five services with their own memory, disk, backups and updates — and none of them appears in the install command.

Does the licence allow the use your company will make of it?

The question almost nobody asks before installing, and that changes everything afterwards.

Skyller

The company signs a platform usage contract, with the terms, the privacy policy and the data processing agreement published in the Trust Center. There is no clause tying the number of people to whether you may customise the appearance, and your company's brand on the sign-in screen is an account setting.

Your own solution

We read the official licences of four well-known projects, and they differ a great deal. LibreChat is MIT: do what you like. Open WebUI is a modified BSD that prohibits altering, removing, obscuring or replacing the “Open WebUI” branding in any deployment, with three exceptions — up to fifty end users in thirty days, written permission from the copyright holder, or an enterprise licence. Dify is a modified Apache 2.0 that prohibits operating a multi-tenant environment without written authorisation and prohibits removing the console logo. And n8n is not a classic open licence at all: it is the Sustainable Use License, which limits use to your own internal business purposes or non-commercial use, and reserves files with “.ee.” in the name to whoever holds their enterprise licence.

None of these clauses is a trap: they are business models published in the repository itself, and they are how these projects sustain themselves. The trap is installing without reading which one applies to your case.

Can the total cost be predicted before starting?

Skyller

Each plan's subscription and credit balance are published on the Pricing page, and consumption appears on the company dashboard. What moves the numbers is the plan and the AI consumption — not how many people started using it, up to the plan's user limit.

Your own solution

The licence may cost zero, and in several projects it genuinely does. What remains are four lines that depend on your company: infrastructure — Open WebUI lists a database, a vector database, shared storage, Redis and a load balancer before the second instance —; the model providers, which you pay for on both routes; the paid plans of the components, when the company needs single sign-on or committed support; and your team's hours, the line nobody puts in the spreadsheet.

This page publishes no total cost figure, and that is deliberate: it depends on the salaries, the hours and the scale of your company. Any number we invented here would serve to sell, not to help you decide.

Can AI specialists work together?

Skyller

Depending on the selected mode, the lead routes to one specialist or coordinates several members and combines their output. A Team can consult all members or execute tasks; each agent uses its allowed model configuration, including different providers.

Models and usage follow the plan’s modes and credits; access follows permissions.

Your own solution

A custom solution can combine agents, models and automations with components such as Dify and n8n. Your team designs the architecture, integrates the stages and maintains permissions, tests and workflow evolution.

Capabilities and modification rights depend on the selected components and licenses.

Who validates knowledge before the team relies on it?

Skyller

The company can configure single approval or review followed by approval, with recorded roles and decisions. Drafts, pending content and rejected documents stay out of production knowledge answers. Company workspaces define access to published material.

Workspace policy defines stages and responsibilities; individual spaces may publish automatically.

Your own solution

The company can connect a document system or build review, publication and decision history. The selected system must also control which document versions and states inform agent answers.

The complete workflow is part of the project; installing a chat interface does not guarantee it.

Can a routine run again without repeating the request?

Skyller

Schedule agents and Teams for recurring routines or event-triggered runs. Set a time and timezone, track run history and receive notifications. Work runs on the server under the access context of the person who configured it.

Runs use available permissions and credits. API access depends on plan; local connectors need Desktop and the connector running.

Your own solution

Automation tools can run routines and distribute work through queues. n8n documents execution with workers and Redis; availability, credentials and monitoring must be defined for the deployed environment.

Your team maintains the workflow and operations, or contracts that service.

Does company single sign-on come at no extra cost?

Skyller

Not on every plan, and we would rather write that down than leave it implicit: company single sign-on starts at Corporate. On the plans below it, each person has an account on the platform, and each workspace's access list applies on any plan.

On this row Skyller has no advantage to show: single sign-on is a high-plan feature here too.

Your own solution

Dify reserves SSO for Enterprise. In n8n, SSO, projects and workflow sharing are paid Business or Enterprise features, depending on the feature. In Community, the instance owner retains access to workflows alongside their creators; a creator leaving does not make the automation disappear.

These terms apply to the cited projects, not every custom solution.

Who handles the updates and what they break?

Skyller

In SaaS mode, Skyller maintains the platform, updates and service operations. Your company remains responsible for validating its workflows, authorizations and integrations when relevant changes occur.

Your own solution

A custom solution requires tracking component versions and their effects on integrations. n8n publishes breaking changes and migration guidance; this record helps plan tests, upgrades and rollback when needed.

Effort varies by architecture and version; an internal team or contracted service can own it.

Is compliance covered by contract?

The question that shows up at the first audit, and not before.

Skyller

The relationship is contractual. The data processing agreement, the privacy policy and the Security page state what Skyller takes on, where the data sits and what is processed by connected services. Where responsibility belongs to the client company, that is written down too — including what changes in a deployment on customer-controlled infrastructure.

Your own solution

A self-hosted deployment can meet enterprise requirements with the necessary controls and processes. Open WebUI documentation distinguishes technical capabilities from the organization’s compliance responsibility; additional contracts may cover support and operations.

Define controls, owners and contractual commitments for the chosen environment.

Who answers when it stops on a Monday morning?

Skyller

A Skyller team, in Portuguese and on business days, included on any plan. The channel and the response time vary by plan and are published on the Pricing page.

Your own solution

Without a contract, support is the project's community and your own team; Open WebUI's enterprise documentation is explicit in stating the software is provided “as is”. With a contract, the projects themselves sell what is missing: Dify's Enterprise edition publishes professional technical support, negotiated SLAs, and updates and maintenance carried out by their own team.

With no contract there is no response time for anyone to hold to: “as is” means Monday morning is yours. Committed support tends to be exactly what the paid edition of the same project sells — which is fair, and belongs in the numbers.

Is there a version already run by the vendor itself?

Because building your own is not the only alternative to subscribing.

Skyller

Skyller is the operated platform: hosting, updates, monitoring and support are part of the subscription. Under the Enterprise arrangement, deployment can happen on customer-controlled infrastructure, per project and contract.

Your own solution

Dify offers cloud and Enterprise options with their own terms. n8n also offers cloud alongside self-hosting. Compare managed component editions when you do not want to own infrastructure; the complete workflow integration still needs to be defined.

Can the tool be changed to fit your exact process?

Skyller

Inside the platform there is plenty to configure: workspaces, roles and access lists, agents, which actions stop for approval function by function, document templates. Changing product behaviour beyond that is a project conversation.

The code is not in your hands. Here your own solution has the advantage, and there is no point dressing it up.

Your own solution

Here building your own wins, comfortably. Under LibreChat's MIT licence the company changes whatever it wants, runs it wherever it wants and depends on no vendor. In the other three there are published limits — Open WebUI's branding, Dify's logo, n8n's enterprise files — but the product's behaviour stays in the hands of whoever installed it. For a company with a very particular process and people to run it, that is worth more than any table.