I see the problem — your Ollama server is bound to 127.0.0.1:11434, which means it’s only accessible on the host, not inside your Docker container. That’s why Open WebUI inside Docker can’t connect when it tries localhost:11434 — in the container, “localhost” is itself, not your host machine.

You have two main ways to fix it:

Option 1 – Use host.docker.internal

Run your Open WebUI container with:

docker run -d \
  -p 3000:8080 \
  --add-host=host.docker.internal:host-gateway \
  -v open-webui:/app/backend/data \
  -e OLLAMA_HOST=http://host.docker.internal:11434 \
  --name open-webui \
  --restart always \
  ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:main

Option 2 – Bind Ollama to all interfaces

Edit your Ollama service config so it listens on 0.0.0.0 instead of 127.0.0.1.

  1. Edit the systemd service:

    sudo systemctl edit ollama

  2. Add:

    [Service]
Environment="OLLAMA_HOST=0.0.0.0"

  3. Reload and restart:

    sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart ollama

  4. Verify:

    ss -tulpn | grep 11434

    You should see 0.0.0.0:11434.

Then you could run Open WebUI with:

docker run -d \
  -p 3000:8080 \
  -v open-webui:/app/backend/data \
  -e OLLAMA_HOST=http://<your_host_ip>:11434 \
  --name open-webui \
  --restart always \
  ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:main

If you want the quick fix without touching Ollama configs, Option 1 with host.docker.internal will work right away. If you want other devices to access Ollama too, go with Option 2.

Do you want me to rewrite your current Docker command for Open WebUI so it works with host.docker.internal immediately? That will solve the connection issue without changing Ollama’s binding.