MindStudio vs Onyx (2026): Pricing, Features & Verdict
Onyx is our pick, scoring 7.2/10 against 7/10 for MindStudio on our AI Software criteria. Its biggest advantage: higher Analytics score (5/10 vs 4/10). For 10 users, MindStudio and Onyx are both free; both MindStudio and Onyx have a free plan.
Last updated: November 2026
MindStudio
7/10
MindStudio is a no-code visual builder for creating, deploying and running AI agents and workflows across 200+ models, aimed at business operators, agencies and teams.
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 | 7/10 | 7.2/10 |
| Integration | 8/10 | 8/10 |
| Analytics | 4/10 | 5/10 |
| Customization | 8/10 | 9/10 |
| Ease of Use | 7/10 | 6/10 |
| Support | 6/10 | 5/10 |
| Cost | 7/10 | 8/10 |
| Scalability | 7/10 | 7/10 |
| Security | 7/10 | 8/10 |
| Output Quality | 7/10 | 7/10 |
| Pricing | ||
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Cheapest paid plan | $20/mo Individual | $20/user/mo Business |
| Estimated cost for 10 users | Free Free | Free Community Edition (self-hosted) |
| Features | ||
| AI Agents | ||
| API Access | ||
| Chatbots | ||
| Code Generation | ||
| Enterprise Controls | ||
| Image Generation | ||
| Knowledge Base Search | ||
| Private Deployment | ||
| Text Generation | ||
| Voice and Audio | Not listed | |
| Workflow Automation | Not listed | |
MindStudio vs Onyx cost by team size
MindStudio and Onyx cost the same at every team size we checked.
| Team size | MindStudio | Onyx |
|---|---|---|
| 1 user | FreeFree | FreeCommunity Edition (self-hosted) |
| 5 users | FreeFree | FreeCommunity Edition (self-hosted) |
| 10 users | FreeFree | FreeCommunity Edition (self-hosted) |
| 25 users | FreeFree | FreeCommunity Edition (self-hosted) |
| 50 users | FreeFree | 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 MindStudio and Onyx suit
MindStudio fits small business better; Onyx fits enterprise better.
| Audience | MindStudio | Onyx |
|---|---|---|
| Enterprise | 6/10The Business tier has SSO, audit logs, self-hosting and SOC 2 Type II, but its pricing is opaque. | 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. |
| Small Business | 7/10The free tier and $20 plan make it cheap to start, although team features need the custom Business plan. | 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. |
| Agencies | 8/10Reviewers call out agencies building multi-model client workflows without engineers as a core fit. | Not rated |
| Developers | Not rated | 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. |
| Freelancers | 8/10The Individual plan includes unlimited agents and runs, and creators can monetize the agents they publish. | 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. |
| Operations Teams | 7/10Scheduled, email-triggered and webhook agents with human approval steps fit operational automation. | 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 MindStudio
- Higher Ease of Use score (7/10 vs 6/10)
- Higher Support score (6/10 vs 5/10)
- Better fit for small business (7/10 vs 5/10)
Why choose Onyx
- Higher Analytics score (5/10 vs 4/10)
- Higher Customization score (9/10 vs 8/10)
- Better fit for enterprise (8/10 vs 6/10)
Pros & Cons
MindStudio
Pros
- Each block in a workflow can use a different model, chosen from more than 200, with no need for your own API keys.
- Model usage is charged at the provider's rate with no markup on every plan.
- One build can deploy as a web app, embed, API, webhook, Chrome extension, scheduled agent or MCP server.
- Power users can add custom JavaScript, Python and HTTP blocks when the no-code blocks fall short.
- The free tier allows 1 agent and 1,000 runs a month, and the Individual plan has unlimited runs for $20.
Cons
- There is no mid-tier team plan, so collaboration requires custom-priced Business.
- Token usage is billed on top of the subscription, which makes high-volume costs hard to forecast.
- Reviewers say complex branching logic has a real learning curve and sometimes needs workarounds.
- There are no built-in analytics for output accuracy or quality.
- Written documentation for advanced features has gaps, according to reviewers.
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
Onyx scores higher on our AI Software criteria: 7.2/10 against 7/10 for MindStudio. The largest gap is in Analytics: 4/10 for MindStudio and 5/10 for Onyx.
Both are free for 10 users.
Yes, both MindStudio and Onyx have a free plan.
Onyx is the better fit for enterprise: we rate it 8/10 for them, against 6/10 for MindStudio.
