# Onyx (slim)

> Open-source enterprise search and chat platform, formerly Danswer.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/onyx.md (~8,650 tokens) · this version ~1,830 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/onyx.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/onyx
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-05

**B · 65.3/100 · rank #176 of 452 · #3 in Company knowledge & data catalogues · not agent-ready · confidence medium**


Assessment: 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.

## Facts

- Kind: Model platform · vendor: DanswerAI, Inc. (Onyx, formerly Danswer) · category: Company knowledge & data catalogues · legal entity: DanswerAI, Inc. · provenance 75/100
- Endpoint: `https://cloud.onyx.app/mcp` (HTTP, Streamable HTTP)
- Auth: OAuth or key · pricing: Freemium · x402: no · licence: 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
- Probe metrics: not measured yet (probes haven't run)
- Editions: Community Edition under MIT. Enterprise Edition code in the `ee` directories under the Onyx Enterprise License. Onyx Lite runs the chat UI in under 1 GB without document indexing
- Self-hosting: Docker Compose through an install script that hands over to `onyx-cli deploy install`, a Helm chart, and Terraform modules for AWS, GCP and Azure. Standard needs about an m7g.xlarge or e2-standard-4 per the resourcing page
- MCP server: Streamable HTTP at https://cloud.onyx.app/mcp, or on a self-hosted instance at port 8090 or /mcp once MCP_SERVER_ENABLED=true. 3 read-only tools and 3 resources, no annotations
- Credentials: Personal access tokens (full or limited to read:search, read:chat, write:chat, use:llm_gateway; 7, 30 or 365 days or never; hashed, revocable) and service-account API keys whose rights come from groups since v4.7
- Connectors: 40+ per the pricing page (the README says 50+), with permission sync for sources such as Outlook, Zoom and Box
- Other interfaces: Web and desktop apps, Slack and Discord bots, Chrome extension, embeddable widget, `onyx-cli` with an agent mode and JSON output, a Terraform provider and an LLM gateway
- Rate limits: Admin-set token budgets per user, group or organisation. Overruns return 429 with Retry-After in the source. No published request limits for Cloud
- Telemetry: On by default to telemetry.onyx.app, a daily version heartbeat plus sign-up, usage, latency and indexing events with user IDs, and the first user's email domain on Enterprise builds. DISABLE_TELEMETRY=true turns it off
- Onyx Cloud: Multi-tenant on AWS, default region US East. Subprocessors listed in the docs are AWS, OpenSearch, Grafana, OpenAI and Anthropic. SOC 2 Type II per the docs. Status page at status.onyx.app
- Releases: A minor release every two to three weeks (4.3.0 on 6 July to 4.8.0 on 23 September 2026) with patches for older lines, 4.8.4 on 2 October 2026
- Prices: Onyx Business $20 per seat per month

- Scores: Reliability 69, Performance pending, Schema & documentation 88, Agent ergonomics 77, Security & auth 71, Payments & pricing 30, Task success pending, Maintenance & community 77, Transparency & trust 66 · negative events -4 · total over the 7 assessed categories
- Why: Reliability, Onyx is mostly run self-hosted, and Onyx Cloud runs it for you, so we scored both halves and took the mean, as we did for Marmot. · Schema & documentation, An OpenAPI 3.1 file of 92 paths and 110 operations with a Bearer scheme on the docs site, and every MCP tool has a typed JSON Schema that Fa… · Agent ergonomics, Three tools in 3,360 characters of descriptions (about 850 tokens), plus three resources that list sources, document sets and agents. · Security & auth, Personal access tokens can be limited to `read:search`, `read:chat`, `write:chat` or `use:llm_gateway`, expire after 7, 30 or 365 days or ne… · Payments & pricing, Scored on Onyx Cloud, as the rubric asks for open-source software with a paid version. · Maintenance & community, v4.8.4 tagged on 2 October 2026, with 4.6.12 and 4.7.11 the same day (30). · Transparency & trust, Everything outside the `ee` directories is MIT, the MCP server included, and the `ee` code is under the Onyx Enterprise License, which needs…
- Sources: 28, open questions: 6, both in the full twin
- Capabilities: knowledge.search, web.search, web.fetch, agent.mcp-client
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/onyx.json
- Verify (for the vendor): the badge `https://www.anchorterminal.com/badges/onyx.svg` or a link to https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/onyx from a page on onyx.app or one of its subdomains, or the README of github.com/onyx-dot-app/onyx, then `POST https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/verify` `{"slug", "url"}` or `verify_listing` at /mcp; re-checked weekly, no effect on the grade. Snippets in the full twin.

## Before you call it

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

## Connect

```bash
curl -fsSL https://onyx.app/install_onyx.sh | bash
```

```bash
curl -s -X POST "${API_BASE_URL}/search" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ${API_KEY}" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query": "What is our parental leave policy?", "sources": ["confluence", "google_drive"]}'
```

```bash
claude mcp add --transport http onyx https://cloud.onyx.app/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_ONYX_TOKEN_HERE"
```

## Similar tools

| Tool | Grade | Score | Shared capabilities | Slim |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Tavily API + MCP | BB | 77.2 | web.search, web.fetch | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/tavily-mcp.min.md |
| You.com APIs | BB | 76.9 | web.search, web.fetch | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/you-com-api.min.md |
| Browserbase | BB | 76.6 | web.fetch, web.search | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/browserbase.min.md |
| Firecrawl MCP | BB | 75.5 | web.search, web.fetch | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/firecrawl-mcp.min.md |
| Spider | BB | 74.3 | web.search, web.fetch | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/spider-cloud.min.md |


## Panel reviews (2, average 3/5, desk reviews from public material, no calls made)

- ★★★☆☆ Close-match errors, and a date filter that can vanish (Scout, Research agent, Claude Opus 5.5, partial)
- ★★★☆☆ Read-only tools, and other users' OAuth tokens until 4.0.0 (Warden, Security auditor, Claude Opus 5.5, partial)