# Alation vs Onyx

> Onyx scores 65 (B) on agent readiness against Alation's 60.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Alation leads on transparency & trust. Both do company knowledge search. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-onyx
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-onyx.md (~2,300 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-onyx.min.md (~880 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-onyx.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-09

Onyx scores 65 (B) on agent readiness against Alation's 60.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Alation leads on transparency & trust. Both do company knowledge search.

- Alation: grade C, 60.3/100, rank #472 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/alation.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/alation.json
- Onyx: grade B, 65/100, rank #303 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/onyx.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/onyx.json

## Which one, for what

### Alation (C)

Good for: A company already on Alation Cloud Service that wants agents to find governed tables, columns, queries, BI reports and lineage, and to run read-only SQL against data products, under an Alation role.

Ahead on:
- Transparency & trust, 76 against 63

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine
- No incidents deducted, where Onyx loses 4 points for them

Watch for: No published price, trial or self-serve sign-up. The pricing address redirects to a sales form

### Onyx (B)

Good for: Teams that want one permission-aware index over Slack, Drive, Confluence, Jira, GitHub and the rest, self-hosted or air-gapped, with agents searching it through MCP.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 69 against 61
- Schema & documentation, 88 against 78
- Agent ergonomics, 77 against 71
- Security & auth, 71 against 63
- Payments & pricing, 30 against 0
- Maintenance & community, 77 against 71

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Free to start without a card
- Open source

Watch for: GHSA-q62f-rv3h-f822 (critical, CVSS 9.0), published 20 July 2026, let any signed-in user read other users' OAuth tokens for per-user MCP servers before 4.0.0


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Alation | Onyx | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 61 | 69 | Onyx +8 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 78 | 88 | Onyx +10 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 71 | 77 | Onyx +6 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 63 | 71 | Onyx +8 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 0 | 30 | Onyx +30 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 71 | 77 | Onyx +6 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 76 | 63 | Alation +13 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -4 | |
| **Total** | | **60.3 · C** | **65 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Alation | Onyx |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | Model platform |
| Vendor | Alation, Inc. | DanswerAI, Inc. (Onyx, formerly Danswer) |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://cloud.onyx.app/mcp` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Paid | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Alation's Master Cloud Software Licence and Services Agreement. The AI Agent SDK, the MCP server package, the Allie SDK and the Data Quality SDK are Apache-2.0 | MIT (Community Edition, including the MCP server, the API server, the CLI and the connectors). Code under the `ee` directories is under the Onyx Enterprise License, which needs a subscription for production use |
| Tools exposed | 16 | 3 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-03 | 2026-10-02 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | couldn't be read |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | couldn't be read |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | couldn't be read |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | couldn't be read |
| Popularity | 19 stars, 2.1k PyPI/wk | 32k stars |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Alation.** Each API has an OpenAPI 3.0 definition, and OAuth clients are bound to an Alation role with revocable tokens and rotatable secrets. Access needs a sales contract, since no price, trial or self-serve sign-up is published. The agent SDK and local MCP server have stayed at a release candidate since 14 January 2026.

**Onyx.** MIT Community Edition, MCP server included, run by Docker Compose, Helm or Terraform, with a two-week Cloud trial that needs no card. GHSA-q62f-rv3h-f822 (critical, CVSS 9.0), published 20 July 2026, let any signed-in user read other users' OAuth tokens for per-user MCP servers before 4.0.0.

## Before you call either

### Alation

1. Ask a Server Admin to register an OAuth client application with the lowest role that fits. Only admins can create one, and the secret is shown once
2. Pin `alation-ai-agent-mcp==1.0.0rc3`. An unpinned install resolves to 0.12.0, which predates the catalogue search agent
3. Call `catalog_context_search_agent` for catalogue questions. `alation_context` is deprecated and its description tells models not to call it directly
4. Watch `X-Entitlement-Usage` on Aggregated Context API responses. The 2,000 free calls never reset, and a quota 429 is not retryable
5. Page with `limit` and `skip` and follow `X-Next-Page`. The BI Source API uses `offset`, and one call returns at most 1,000 objects

### Onyx

1. Get the instance URL from the operator. Cloud is https://cloud.onyx.app/mcp, and a self-hosted server only answers once `MCP_SERVER_ENABLED=true`
2. Use a token limited to `read:search`. It covers every MCP tool and nothing else
3. Pass `time_cutoff` as a full ISO 8601 timestamp. A value that doesn't parse is dropped and the search runs unfiltered
4. Check each result for an `error` field. Failures come back with an empty `results` list, not as tool errors
5. Set `skip_query_expansion` to true for exact phrases. It skips an LLM call on every search

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Alation or Onyx?

Onyx scores 65 (B) on agent readiness against Alation's 60.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Alation leads on transparency & trust.

### Can an agent call Alation and Onyx without installing anything?

Alation runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. Onyx has a hosted endpoint at https://cloud.onyx.app/mcp.

### Are Alation and Onyx open source?

No open-source release is listed for Alation. Onyx is open source (MIT (Community Edition, including the MCP server, the API server, the CLI and the connectors). Code under the `ee` directories is under the Onyx Enterprise License, which needs a subscription for production use).


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-onyx.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-onyx.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "alation", "b": "onyx"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare alation onyx`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/alation.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/onyx.json

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