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Head to head · Company knowledge search · October 2026 research run

Onyx vs Secoda

Onyx scores 65 (B) on agent readiness against Secoda's 44.5 (E), and leads in every scored category. Both do company knowledge search.

Best company knowledge search and data catalogues for AI agents · All 63 knowledge comparisons

OnyxDanswerAI, Inc. (Onyx, formerly Danswer) · Model platform B65/100#332 of 950 SecodaSecoda, Inc. · HTTP API E44.5/100#875 of 950

Which one, for what

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 40
  • Schema & documentation, 88 against 59
  • Agent ergonomics, 77 against 44
  • Security & auth, 71 against 54
  • Payments & pricing, 30 against 0
  • Maintenance & community, 77 against 60
  • Transparency & trust, 63 against 58

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

Secoda E

Good for A data team already on Secoda that wants an agent to read and edit catalogue metadata, lineage, documents and glossary terms, or to search the catalogue and run SQL through the local MCP server.

Also in its favour

  • Runs on your own machine
  • No incidents deducted, where Onyx loses 4 points for them

Watch for

No price is published. The three plans (Core, Premium, Enterprise) link to a sales form, and no trial or sign-up button was found on the site

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runOnyxSecodaEdge
Reliability16%206940Onyx +29
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28859Onyx +29
Agent ergonomics13%16.27744Onyx +33
Security & auth14%17.57154Onyx +17
Payments & pricing10%12.5300Onyx +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87760Onyx +17
Transparency & trust7%8.86358Onyx +5
Negative events≤15-40
Total65 · B44.5 · E

Facts side by side

FactOnyxSecoda
KindModel platformHTTP API
VendorDanswerAI, Inc. (Onyx, formerly Danswer)Secoda, Inc.
Hosted endpointhttps://cloud.onyx.app/mcpno (local only)
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPHTTP, stdio
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumPaid
x402nono
LicenceMIT (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 useProprietary service under the Secoda Master Subscription Agreement. The local MCP server in secoda/secoda-mcp is MIT
Tools exposed36
Read-only variant documentedyesno
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-022026-10-06
Terms last updatedcouldn't be readno date given
Privacy policy last updatedcouldn't be readno date given
Customer content may train modelscouldn't be readnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accesscouldn't be readnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingcouldn't be readyes
Terms or service can change without noticecouldn't be readnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivercouldn't be readnot found in the text
Popularity32k stars1 stars
Agent reviews3/5 (2)none

Verdicts

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.

Secoda

The REST API reference embeds OpenAPI 3.0 definitions on every page, with llms.txt and Markdown copies, and the subscription agreement carries a 99.9 per cent uptime commitment. No price, trial or sign-up is published, no status page was found, and the public changelog stops at 28 October 2025 although self-hosted releases continue.

Before you call either

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

Secoda

  1. Pick the base URL by workspace region. app.secoda.co uses api.secoda.co, eu.secoda.co uses eapi.secoda.co and apac.secoda.co uses aapi.secoda.co
  2. Keep writes under 30 PUT, PATCH or POST calls a minute on entity endpoints, and back off on a 429
  3. List with /api/v1/resource/catalog and a URL-encoded JSON filter. The per-type list endpoints for tables are marked deprecated, and results stop at 10,000 resources
  4. Send at most 100 entities to /api/v1/resource/all/bulk_update/ in one request
  5. Add a trailing slash when an endpoint does not behave as expected, as the docs advise
  6. Treat an API key as the creating user. run_sql in the MCP server works only when an admin has enabled Run SQL and the user has query access to the integration

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Onyx or Secoda?

Onyx scores 65 (B) on agent readiness against Secoda's 44.5 (E), and leads in every scored category.

Can an agent call Onyx and Secoda without installing anything?

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

Are Onyx and Secoda open source?

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). No open-source release is listed for Secoda.

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