ChatGPT vs Onyx (2026): Pricing, Features & Verdict
ChatGPT and Onyx both score 7.2/10 on our AI Software criteria. For 10 users, Onyx is free, against $250/mo for ChatGPT; both ChatGPT and Onyx have a free plan.
Last updated: November 2026
ChatGPT
7.2/10
OpenAI's general-purpose AI assistant for writing, research, coding, image creation and agent tasks, sold in individual, team and enterprise plans.
Onyx
7.2/10
Onyx, formerly Danswer, is an open-source AI assistant and enterprise search tool that lets staff search and chat across 50+ connected workplace apps with permissions respected.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
| Feature | | |
|---|---|---|
| Scores | ||
| Overall Rating | 7.2/10 | 7.2/10 |
| Integration | 7/10 | 8/10 |
| Analytics | 5/10 | 5/10 |
| Customization | 7/10 | 9/10 |
| Ease of Use | 9/10 | 6/10 |
| Support | 5/10 | 5/10 |
| Cost | 7/10 | 8/10 |
| Scalability | 8/10 | 7/10 |
| Security | 7/10 | 8/10 |
| Output Quality | 8/10 | 7/10 |
| Pricing | ||
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Cheapest paid plan | $8/mo Go | $20/user/mo Business |
| Estimated cost for 10 users | $250/mo Business Standard | Free Community Edition (self-hosted) |
| Features | ||
| AI Agents | ||
| API Access | ||
| Chatbots | ||
| Code Generation | ||
| Enterprise Controls | ||
| Image Generation | ||
| Knowledge Base Search | ||
| Text Generation | ||
| Voice and Audio | ||
| Data Analysis | Not listed | |
| Private Deployment | Not listed | |
ChatGPT vs Onyx cost by team size
ChatGPT and Onyx cost the same at 1 user; Onyx costs less from 5 users.
| Team size | ChatGPT | Onyx |
|---|---|---|
| 1 user | FreeFree | FreeCommunity Edition (self-hosted) |
| 5 users | $125/moBusiness Standard | FreeCommunity Edition (self-hosted) |
| 10 users | $250/moBusiness Standard | FreeCommunity Edition (self-hosted) |
| 25 users | $625/moBusiness Standard | FreeCommunity Edition (self-hosted) |
| 50 users | $1,250/moBusiness Standard | FreeCommunity Edition (self-hosted) |
The plan that fits each team size, billed monthly, before add-ons and usage charges. Each cost opens that tool's pricing calculator for the team size.
Who ChatGPT and Onyx suit
ChatGPT fits small business better than Onyx.
| Audience | ChatGPT | Onyx |
|---|---|---|
| Small Business | 8/10Business starts at two seats with SSO, centralized billing and no training on business data. | 5/10The cloud trial lowers the barrier to entry, but the self-hosted resource needs and enterprise-oriented features add overhead for very small teams. |
| Developers | 8/10Codex, Pro API credits and the separate OpenAI API support coding work. | 7/10It is MIT-licensed open source with a REST API, ingestion API, MCP server and LLM gateway, but agents are set up through configuration rather than a visual builder. |
| Enterprise | 7/10Enterprise adds SCIM, role-based access and data residency, though OpenAI also sells ChatGPT Enterprise as its own dedicated offering. | 8/10The product is built around permission-aware search across company tools, with SSO, RBAC, air-gapped deployment and named enterprise customers including Netflix, Ramp and Thales. |
| Content Creators | 8/10Combines writing, image and voice tools in one subscription. | Not rated |
| Education | 7/10Offers an Edu plan for universities, and ChatGPT for Teachers is free for verified US K-12 educators through June 2027. | Not rated |
| Freelancers | 9/10The low-cost Go and Plus individual plans cover writing, research and image work. | Not rated |
| Government | Not rated | 6/10Air-gapped and region-specific deployments are offered, but there is no evidence of government-specific certifications. |
| IT Teams | Not rated | 8/10IT teams can self-host it with Docker, Kubernetes or Helm, configure connectors and models, and keep data inside their own infrastructure. |
| Marketing Teams | 8/10Strong at text drafting and image generation, with shared spaces for teams. | Not rated |
| Nonprofits | 7/10Eligible nonprofits can get up to 75% off Business or Enterprise. | Not rated |
| Startups | Not rated | 7/10The free Community Edition and $20 per user Business plan are affordable, but small teams have to run the infrastructure or pay for the cloud plan. |
Which One Should You Choose?
Why choose ChatGPT
- Higher Ease of Use score (9/10 vs 6/10)
- Higher Scalability score (8/10 vs 7/10)
- Better fit for small business (8/10 vs 5/10)
Why choose Onyx
- Lower estimated cost for 10 users: Free vs $250/mo
- Higher Customization score (9/10 vs 7/10)
- Higher Integration score (8/10 vs 7/10)
Pros & Cons
ChatGPT
Pros
- Covers chat, deep research, image generation, voice and coding in a single subscription.
- Has a wide price range, from an $8 Go plan to Business seats at $20 per user on annual billing.
- Business data is not used for training, and Business includes SAML SSO and MFA.
- Standard and Premium seats can be mixed so heavy users get more capacity without upgrading everyone.
- Pro tiers bundle monthly API credits that developers can use.
Cons
- Usage caps vary by plan, change often, and are a frequent complaint from heavy users.
- Users report confident hallucinations and context loss in long threads.
- SCIM, role-based access and data residency require Enterprise through sales.
- Plus and individual plans have no annual billing discount.
- API usage is billed separately from all ChatGPT subscriptions.
Onyx
Pros
- The Community Edition is MIT-licensed and free to self-host, with chat, RAG, agents and actions included.
- More than 50 connectors with continuous sync and hybrid search with reranking, covering Slack, Drive, Confluence, GitHub, Jira and others.
- You can use cloud models from OpenAI, Anthropic or Gemini, or run open-weight models on your own GPUs through Ollama, vLLM or LiteLLM.
- It can be deployed in your own cloud, on bare metal or fully air-gapped, so documents and model traffic stay inside your environment.
- The published $20 per user per month Business price is easy to compare, while Glean does not publish its pricing.
- Onyx Cloud holds SOC 2 Type II and states GDPR compliance, with yearly penetration tests.
Cons
- Self-hosting is a real operations commitment: about eleven services, at least 4 vCPU and 10 GB of RAM, and you own upgrades, backups and monitoring.
- Permission inheritance from sources, SSO, SCIM group sync and query analytics need the paid Enterprise Edition.
- The first full sync of large sources can take days, and changing the embedding model triggers a full re-index.
- The search index runs on a fixed backend, so you cannot swap in a different vector store.
- There are almost no reviews on G2 or Capterra, so there is little independent user feedback to go on.
- Enterprise pricing is not published, and the Business plan comes with community support only.
Not sold on either?
Frequently Asked Questions
ChatGPT and Onyx both score 7.2/10 on our AI Software criteria. The largest gap is in Ease of Use: 9/10 for ChatGPT and 6/10 for Onyx.
Onyx costs less for 10 users: free on its Community Edition (self-hosted) plan, against about $250/mo on its Business Standard plan for ChatGPT, billed monthly.
Yes, both ChatGPT and Onyx have a free plan.
ChatGPT is the better fit for small business: we rate it 8/10 for them, against 5/10 for Onyx.
