# Collibra vs Onyx

> Onyx and Collibra score within a point of each other for company knowledge search, 65 and 64.6 out of 100. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/collibra-vs-onyx
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/collibra-vs-onyx.md (~2,450 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/collibra-vs-onyx.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/collibra-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 and Collibra score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 65 (B) and 64.6 (B). Collibra leads on transparency & trust. Both do company knowledge search.

- Collibra: grade B, 64.6/100, rank #346 of 950. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/collibra.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/collibra.json
- Onyx: grade B, 65/100, rank #332 of 950. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/onyx.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/onyx.json
- Best company knowledge search and data catalogues for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/company-knowledge/index.md
- All 63 knowledge comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/company-knowledge/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Collibra (B)

Good for: An organisation that already runs Collibra and wants an agent to look up assets, glossary terms, lineage and data quality, or to write assets and classifications under a governed role.

Ahead on:
- Transparency & trust, 82 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 returns 404 and the site links a demo request and a product tour

### 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:
- Schema & documentation, 88 against 83
- Payments & pricing, 30 against 0

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 | Collibra | Onyx | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 66 | 69 | Onyx +3 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 83 | 88 | Onyx +5 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 75 | 77 | Onyx +2 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 68 | 71 | Onyx +3 |
| 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) | 76 | 77 | Onyx +1 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 82 | 63 | Collibra +19 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -4 | |
| **Total** | | **64.6 · B** | **65 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Collibra | Onyx |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | Model platform |
| Vendor | Collibra | 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 the Master Collibra Agreement, with the Developer Terms for the REST APIs and CLI. The local MCP server (chip) is Apache-2.0, and the CLI binary ships under a Binary Code Licence Agreement | 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 | 30 | 3 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-04 | 2026-10-02 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | couldn't be read |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read | couldn't be read |
| Customer content may train models | couldn't be read | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read | couldn't be read |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read | couldn't be read |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read | couldn't be read |
| Popularity | 37 stars | 32k stars |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Collibra.** Each REST API has an OpenAPI 3.0 definition, the developer portal publishes llms.txt and Markdown pages, and every MCP tool carries read-only and destructive annotations. Access needs a sales contract, since no price, trial or self-serve sign-up is published, and no general API rate limit was found in the reviewed documentation.

**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

### Collibra

1. Ask a Collibra administrator to register an OAuth application. Integration applications use client credentials, and MCP clients need a user application with a redirect URI
2. Reuse each access token for its 5 minutes. The token endpoint answers 429 once a client drains its pool of 100 tokens, refilled at 30 a minute
3. Page large reads with `cursor=` and `sortField=ID`. Cursor and offset parameters cannot be combined, and Search API `limit` plus `offset` cannot exceed 10,000
4. Keep Import API files to 10,000 assets or fewer and run at most 8 imports at once. Retry a job that fails on a concurrency error
5. Expect `discover_data_assets` and `discover_business_glossary` to consume Collibra Units and to need the `dgc.ai-copilot` permission. Use `search_asset_keyword` for free keyword search

### 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, Collibra or Onyx?

Onyx and Collibra score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 65 (B) and 64.6 (B). Collibra leads on transparency & trust.

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

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

### Are Collibra and Onyx open source?

No open-source release is listed for Collibra. 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/collibra-vs-onyx.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/collibra-vs-onyx.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "collibra", "b": "onyx"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare collibra onyx`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/collibra.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/onyx.json

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