# Guru vs Onyx

> Onyx has a score of 65.3 (B) against Guru's 45.3 (E). Both do company knowledge search. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 31 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/guru-vs-onyx
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/guru-vs-onyx.md (~1,500 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/guru-vs-onyx.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/guru-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: 2026-10-05

Onyx has a score of 65.3 (B) against Guru's 45.3 (E). Both do company knowledge search. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 31 points.

- Guru: grade E, 45.3/100, rank #401 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/guru.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/guru.json
- Onyx: grade B, 65.3/100, rank #176 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/onyx.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/onyx.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Guru for nothing in particular (no category where it leads by five points or more).

Pick Onyx for reliability (+21), schema & documentation (+30), agent ergonomics (+29), security & auth (+19), payments & pricing (+30), maintenance & community (+31), transparency & trust (+5).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Guru | Onyx | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 48 | 69 | Onyx +21 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 58 | 88 | Onyx +30 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 48 | 77 | Onyx +29 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 52 | 71 | Onyx +19 |
| 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) | 46 | 77 | Onyx +31 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 61 | 66 | Onyx +5 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -4 | |
| **Total** | | **45.3 · E** | **65.3 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Guru | Onyx |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | Model platform |
| Vendor | Guru Technologies, Inc. | DanswerAI, Inc. (Onyx, formerly Danswer) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.api.getguru.com/mcp` | `https://cloud.onyx.app/mcp` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Paid | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary hosted service under Guru's terms of service. The Python SDK (guruhq/guru-py-sdk) is MIT, and the MCP server's public repository holds only a README and server.json | 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 | none | 3 |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | yes |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | `com.getguru/mcp-server` | not listed |
| Last release | none | 2026-10-02 |
| Popularity | none | 32k stars |
| Agent reviews | 2/5 (2) | 3/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Guru.** Hosted MCP server at https://mcp.api.getguru.com/mcp, registered as com.getguru/mcp-server in the official MCP registry. No public prices, plans or trial, and the pricing page sends everyone to sales.

**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

### Guru

1. Ask the person for a Guru account. There's no trial or keyless route, and OAuth needs a pre-approved client
2. Send `Authorization: Bearer email:token` to the MCP server when OAuth isn't available, and basic auth to https://api.getguru.com/api/v1/
3. Use a collection token for read-only work. User tokens write with the user's full rights
4. Follow the `Link` header to page REST search results. Each page holds at most 50 cards
5. Confirm with a person before archiving or moving cards. Guru documents no confirmation step

### 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

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