What danswer (ring-fence) does

Onyx AI (formerly Danswer) is an open-source enterprise search and AI assistant platform that connects to a company's documents, applications, and people via 40+ native connectors spanning Slack, Google Drive, Confluence, Jira, GitHub, Salesforce, Notion, HubSpot, Linear, Fireflies, and others. The platform combines hybrid search (semantic embeddings plus BM25 keyword retrieval), advanced RAG, contextual retrieval, and LLM-based knowledge graphs to ground responses in company knowledge, and ships an Orchestrator-led multi-agent Deep Research system that achieved #1 rankings on both EnterpriseRAG-Bench and the DeepResearch Bench. Onyx is permission-aware by design, syncing ACLs from source systems so users only see content they already have access to, and supports model-agnostic deployment across 100+ LLMs via LiteLLM, including local models through Ollama. The product is offered as an MIT-licensed self-hosted community edition, a Business Cloud subscription at $20/user/month (no minimum seats), and an Enterprise tier with custom pricing, SLAs, dedicated support, and white-labeling for regulated and air-gapped deployments.

The company is headquartered in San Francisco and was co-founded by Chris Weaver and Yuhong Sun with the stated mission of building the open-source application layer for all LLMs. Go-to-market combines product-led growth (free trial, self-serve cloud, self-hosted free option) with an enterprise field sales motion for compliance-sensitive buyers. Customer references include Ramp (reporting 30x ROI on thousands of weekly questions) and Helsing (defense), with self-reported adoption by 1,000+ enterprise teams and hundreds of thousands of users. Backed by a $10M seed round in March 2025 from Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, and Y Combinator (plus angels from Dropbox, Datadog, Mercury, Coinbase/Pinterest, and Zeus Living), Onyx holds SOC 2 Type II and GDPR compliance and publishes detailed competitive comparisons against Glean, ChatGPT Enterprise, Microsoft Copilot, Dust, Open WebUI, and LibreChat.

Name

danswer (ring-fence)

Legal name

Onyx

Website

https://danswer.ai

Company type

Private

Operating status

Operating

Short description

Onyx AI is an open-source enterprise search and AI assistant platform that connects to a company's documents and apps across 40+ tools, using hybrid retrieval, knowledge graphs, and multi-agent Deep Research to deliver permission-aware answers for enterprise, mid-market, and regulated-industry teams.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Enterprise Search & AI Knowledge Management

NAICS

Web Search Portals and All Other Information Services (519290)

SIC

Services-Prepackaged Software (7372)

akta.pro primary industry

Conversational AI Platforms (chat/voice bots, orchestration) (HDAAAFAC)

akta.pro secondary industry

Digital Employee Experience (DEX) & IT Experience Management (ITXM) Platforms (HDAEALAL)

Keywords

• Enterprise search
• AI assistant platform
• Retrieval augmented generation
• Open source AI
• Knowledge management

Headquarters

HQ city

San Francisco

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Personnel, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales, Operations

Revenue model

1. Business Cloud Subscription: SaaS cloud subscription at $20/user/month (billed annually) or $25/user/month (monthly). Includes full platform access, connectors, admin dashboard, SSO, and support. No minimum seat or contract requirement. 14-day free trial.
2. Enterprise Cloud Subscription: Custom enterprise pricing for large deployments. Adds SLAs, dedicated support, white-labeling, and advanced security features beyond the Business tier. Sold via sales-assisted motion.
3. Self-Hosted Community Edition: MIT-licensed open-source community edition free to self-host. Users pay for their own infrastructure and LLM API keys. Revenue comes from community adoption driving enterprise conversions.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels8 records

Core offering

Onyx is an open-source AI chat platform connected to enterprise documents, applications, and people. It combines hybrid search (semantic and keyword via BM25), advanced Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), contextual retrieval, and LLM-based knowledge graphs to deliver accurate, permission-aware answers across 40+ enterprise tools including Slack, Google Drive, Confluence, Jira, GitHub, and Salesforce. The platform supports both managed cloud deployment and self-hosted MIT-licensed community editions.

Product overview

Onyx is an open-source AI platform consisting of a core product (Onyx Platform) with integrated features including Chat, Search, Agents & Actions, and 40+ enterprise Connectors. The platform supports both Onyx Cloud (managed deployment) and Self-Hosted options. Additional offerings include Deep Research for advanced investigations, the EnterpriseRAG-Bench benchmark tool, LLM Leaderboard for model comparisons, and an Infrastructure Calculator for hardware planning. Onyx integrates with 40+ enterprise tools and supports model-agnostic deployment across 100+ LLMs.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• EnterpriseRAG-Bench: The first RAG benchmark built on company-internal data, not Wikipedia. 500K+ docs, 500 questions, 9 enterprise sources. Open-source, MIT-licensed.
• Onyx Deep Research
• Onyx Cloud

Products and services

• Onyx Platform Open-source AI chat platform connected to enterprise documents, apps, and people, combining hybrid search, advanced RAG, contextual retrieval, and LLM-based knowledge graphs for accurate enterprise knowledge access across 40+ integrated tools.
• Onyx Cloud Managed cloud deployment of the Onyx Platform at $20/user/month (annual) or $25/user/month (monthly), with a 14-day free trial and no credit card required. Includes full platform access, connectors, admin dashboard, SSO, and support with no minimum seat or contract requirement.
• Self-Hosted Onyx (Community Edition) MIT-licensed open-source community edition that users can self-host on any infrastructure including cloud, on-premise, or air-gapped environments. Users pay only for their own infrastructure and LLM API keys. Includes 20k GitHub stars and an active community.
• Deep Research Multi-step research system with Clarification, Planning, Orchestrator, Research, Intermediate Report, and Final Report agents that decomposes complex queries, runs parallel investigations across multiple sources, and synthesizes comprehensive answers. Ranked #1 on DeepResearch Bench.
• EnterpriseRAG-Bench Open-source MIT-licensed RAG benchmark built on company-internal data with 500K+ docs, 500 questions, and 9 enterprise sources for evaluating enterprise search solutions.
• LLM Leaderboard Comprehensive ranking of major open and closed-source LLMs compared across reasoning, coding, math, agentic, software engineering, and chat benchmarks.
• Infrastructure Calculator GPU and VRAM model checker to determine which LLMs can run on specific hardware configurations, supporting enterprise infrastructure planning for self-hosted deployments.
• Developer Platform / APIs Developer platform with API access and developer tools supporting query expansion, agent behavior configs, and MCP (Model Context Protocol) for building custom integrations and extending Onyx capabilities.

Quantifiable outcome

• 64% win rate vs ChatGPT Enterprise, 68.1% vs Claude Enterprise, 73.9% vs Notion AI on real enterprise questions (N=99, judged by GPT-5.2 and Claude Opus 4.5)
• +4 more outcomes

Named customers2 records

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration15 records

AI capability9 records

Feature7 records

Partnerships

One partnership is on record.

• 40+ Enterprise Tool IntegrationscoreTechnology or IntegrationOnyx provides native connectors for 40+ enterprise tools: Slack, Google Drive, Confluence, Jira, GitHub, Salesforce, Notion, HubSpot, Linear, Fireflies, Gmail, and more. These are built-in product integrations rather than formal partnership agreements.

Scale indicators9 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Direct peers

• Open WebUI: Open-source AI chat interface (formerly Ollama WebUI). Onyx maintains direct comparison page highlighting MIT license advantage vs Open WebUI's restrictive custom license adopted in April 2025. Both serve self-hosted LLM users.
• Glean: Direct competitor in enterprise AI search and knowledge retrieval. Glean is the well-funded incumbent Onyx explicitly compares against ($55+/user/month with $50K minimums vs Onyx's $20). Both target enterprise knowledge unification across SaaS tools with permission-aware retrieval.
• LibreChat: Open-source ChatGPT alternative supporting multiple LLM providers. Onyx maintains direct comparison page; both serve self-hosted AI chat use cases, though LibreChat is more consumer/developer focused.

Broad incumbents

• Microsoft Copilot: Broad incumbent bundled into Microsoft 365 providing AI assistant capabilities across Word, Excel, Teams, etc. Onyx positions against Copilot on permission-aware access control and self-hosted deployment for data sovereignty.
• ChatGPT Enterprise: OpenAI's enterprise AI assistant offering with broad distribution advantage. Onyx claims 64% win rate vs ChatGPT Enterprise on real workplace questions, positioning on grounding in company data and self-hosting.
• Box AI / Box Search: Enterprise content management platform with AI-powered search capabilities. Comparable in targeting enterprise document retrieval with permission controls, though narrower scope than Onyx's horizontal app connector approach.

Emerging players

• Hebbia: Enterprise AI platform targeting financial services and professional knowledge work. Comparable in deploying LLM-powered document analysis for enterprise customers, though focused more on analyst workflows than horizontal search.
• Dust: Emerging AI assistant platform focused on company-wide knowledge agents. Onyx maintains a direct comparison page (onyx.app/alternatives/dust), positioning on open-source vs Dust's closed-source approach.
• Perplexity Enterprise Pro: AI-powered search and answer platform with enterprise tier. Comparable in providing grounded AI answers with source citations, though primarily web-focused versus Onyx's enterprise-internal data focus.
• Notion AI: AI features embedded in Notion workspace. Onyx claims 76% win rate vs Notion AI on enterprise questions, positioning on horizontal cross-tool retrieval vs Notion's single-workspace scope.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• GitHubgithub.com/onyx-dot-app/onyx
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/onyx-dot-app
• Xx.com/onyx_dot_app

Compliance2 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles2 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about danswer (ring-fence)