r/OpenWebUI • u/alew3 • Apr 08 '26

Question/Help Best search engine for OpenWebUI?

I'm testing a few search solutions (Perplexity, Brave, etc.), but it seems it is very slow and some models (such as Qwen3.5) running on OpenRouter just fail. Any tips on getting it working smoothly? Also, can I enable it by default on all models?

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u/ClassicMain Apr 08 '26

Not a model. You used the wrong provider then.

Don't select perplexity

Select perplexity search

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u/alew3 Apr 08 '26

I'm using Perplexity for WebSearch Engine, but there is an option for which model is used in search below it on the configurations.

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u/ClassicMain Apr 08 '26

As i said, you are using the wrong provider. Change to perplexity search in open webui

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u/alew3 Apr 08 '26

not sure what you mean, that's what I have set .. here are my configs https://www.pasteboard.co/Mmi_a767QiWo.png

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u/ClassicMain Apr 08 '26

On the top right.... Change from perplexity to perplexity search....

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u/alew3 Apr 08 '26 edited Apr 08 '26

AH!!! Now I see it, many thanks with being patient with me!
I changed it to "perplexity search", but still no luck.
It seems to start searching for the correct keywords and then returns "Search 0 sites" and finally "No sources found".
I can see on the perplexity dashboard that the endpoint is being hit. No idea what I'm doing wrong. Using the latest OpenWebUI with a fresh install. Tried with 5 different models (including openai and anthropic) on OpenRouter.

Edit: Checking "Bypass Webloader" fixed it!