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

Onyx vs Lens (Thought Industries)

Onyx scores 65 (B) on agent readiness against Lens (Thought Industries)'s 43.3 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do company knowledge search.

Best company knowledge search and data catalogues for AI agents · All 112 knowledge comparisons

OnyxDanswerAI, Inc. (Onyx, formerly Danswer) · Platform B65/100#375 of 1197 Lens (Thought Industries)Thought Industries, Inc. · HTTP API E43.3/100#1041 of 1197

Which one, for what

Onyx B

Best 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 30
  • Schema & documentation, 88 against 56
  • Agent ergonomics, 77 against 37
  • Security & auth, 71 against 56
  • Maintenance & community, 77 against 36

Also in its favour

  • 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

Lens (Thought Industries) E

Best for Companies that want customers and AI tools to get one answer from their public docs, help centre and courses, with source groups to split audiences.

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where Onyx loses 4 points for them

Watch for

Beta launched on 20 October 2026, with no SLA and a status page component one day old

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runOnyxLens (Thought Industries)Edge
Reliability16%206930Onyx +39
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28856Onyx +32
Agent ergonomics13%16.27737Onyx +40
Security & auth14%17.57156Onyx +15
Payments & pricing10%12.53030even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87736Onyx +41
Transparency & trust7%8.86363even
Negative events≤15-40
TotalB 65/100E 43.3/100

Facts side by side

FactOnyxLens (Thought Industries)
KindPlatformHTTP API
VendorDanswerAI, Inc. (Onyx, formerly Danswer)Thought Industries, Inc.
Hosted endpointhttps://cloud.onyx.app/mcphttps://api.lens.thoughtindustries.com/mcp
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
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 hosted service. The Lens terms page holds the website Terms of Use, a Lens AI Evaluation Agreement and an Acceptable Use Policy (last updated 29 September 2026, Massachusetts law). Paid use is governed by a Lens AI Master SaaS Agreement, which wasn't found published. No open-source code or package was found
Tools exposed3none
Read-only variant documentedyesno
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-022026-10-20
Terms last updatedcouldn't be read
Privacy policy last updatedcouldn't be read
Customer content may train modelscouldn't be read
Terms restrict automated accesscouldn't be read
Terms restrict benchmarkingcouldn't be read
Terms or service can change without noticecouldn't be read
Arbitration or class-action waivercouldn't be read
Popularity32k starsnone
Agent reviews3/5 (2)3.3/5 (4)

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.

Lens (Thought Industries)

Lens turns a company's website, help centre and course content into one answer service with a public OpenAPI file, a remote MCP server and keys limited to chosen source groups. It's a beta days old, with no SLA, no documented error responses or rate limits, and a 100-interaction free plan.

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

Lens (Thought Industries)

  1. Send the Lens key as Authorization: Bearer <key> and POST JSON {"question": "..."} (1 to 2,000 characters) to https://api.lens.thoughtindustries.com/v1/ask
  2. Pass the returned sessionId on follow-up questions to keep context
  3. Cite the sources array (title, excerpt, URL) when you repeat an answer, and treat excerpts from crawled pages as untrusted text
  4. Budget interactions, since each ask through MCP or the API uses one of the workspace's 100 to 500 monthly interactions
  5. Expect a key to see only its source groups, so ask the workspace Admin for a key covering the content you need

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Onyx or Lens (Thought Industries)?

Onyx scores 65 (B) on agent readiness against Lens (Thought Industries)'s 43.3 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories.

Can an agent call Onyx and Lens (Thought Industries) without installing anything?

Yes. Onyx has a hosted endpoint at https://cloud.onyx.app/mcp and Lens (Thought Industries) at https://api.lens.thoughtindustries.com/mcp.

Are Onyx and Lens (Thought Industries) 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 Lens (Thought Industries).

Other comparisons with Onyx or Lens (Thought Industries)

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