Onyx Community Edition vs Enterprise Edition

Onyx's pricing page lists the Business plan at $20 per user per month billed annually. That is the only published per-seat figure for the paid tier, and it covers the Onyx cloud plan rather than a self-hosted Enterprise Edition license. Confirm with Onyx which deployment model a Business subscription applies to before you budget for it, because the self-hosted path is priced differently. Check the current figure on the Onyx pricing page before you finalize any budget, since list prices can change.

Onyx does not publish a price for Enterprise, and the pricing page lists it as on request. The Enterprise tier adds OIDC and SAML SSO, on-premise deployments and region-specific deployments on top of everything in Business. Those features depend on your user count, deployment footprint and support needs, so the price follows from the scope you define. Ask Onyx to state the price basis (per user, per deployment or a flat fee) in writing so you can compare it with your own estimate.

A usable quote states the license tier, the number of seats and the billing term, and it names every feature the tier includes. It should also list the deployment model (self-hosted, Onyx Cloud or self-hosted Enterprise), the support terms, and any renewal or price-change conditions. For a self-hosted build, ask who pays for the Postgres, Vespa or OpenSearch index, Redis and model server infrastructure, because the license does not cover it. Request a separate line for implementation work, if any, so one-time and recurring costs stay visible.

Most infrastructure cost is recurring, because the services run continuously. The Onyx deployment docs list Postgres, Vespa or OpenSearch for the index, Redis and model servers as part of the Standard deployment, along with background sync workers and object storage. Setup, initial sizing and the first configuration are one-time efforts, while compute, storage, backups and model inference recur. Model inference costs grow with usage if you call a proprietary provider, and they stay near fixed if you run local models through Ollama or vLLM on your own hardware. Ask your infrastructure team to model both the initial build and the monthly run cost.

The main drivers are the size of the document corpus, the number of connectors syncing and how often they sync, the number of concurrent users, and where the models run. A larger index needs more storage and memory for the search backend, while more frequent sync jobs add background worker load. Choosing Onyx Lite instead of Standard removes the vector database and background workers, which lowers the footprint for chat and agents without document indexing. Local model servers shift cost to hardware you already own or must buy, while proprietary providers shift it to per-use billing. Ask for the sizing assumptions behind any quote so you can test them.

The effort depends on your identity provider, your protocol choice and how much provisioning you need. Onyx lists Google OAuth, OIDC or SAML for single sign-on, and SCIM user provisioning, role-based access control and query history auditing among its enterprise features, so those are the items to scope. Expect work in configuring the application in your IdP, mapping groups to Onyx roles, testing logout and session behavior, and validating that deprovisioning removes access. Ask Onyx and your implementation partner to name a duration only after they review your IdP setup, because no published timeline is available for this step.

Your team can run it if it already operates Kubernetes or Docker, a PostgreSQL service and an identity provider, and has time to own upgrades. The open-source Community Edition is MIT licensed, so the code is free to run, but Enterprise features such as SSO, SCIM and RBAC are under the Onyx Enterprise License and require that license. Outside help is useful when the scope covers multiple connectors, air-gapped hosting or formal evidence for an assessment. Whichever path you choose, define the scope in writing first so the work and its cost are clear.

Yes, the Community Edition can serve production traffic because its code is MIT licensed and covers RAG, AI chat, agents and actions, and the connector set in the repository. The license does not settle readiness, though. Production fitness depends on how you size and monitor the Standard deployment (Postgres, Vespa or OpenSearch, Redis, model servers and object storage), how you apply upgrades, and whether you need features gated behind the Enterprise license, such as OIDC or SAML SSO, SCIM provisioning, RBAC, usage analytics and query history auditing. Confirm with Onyx which support terms, if any, apply to Community deployments before you commit to a production date.

The length of an Enterprise rollout depends on drivers you can list before work starts, and no fixed duration applies to every team. The main drivers are the number of connected sources and how each one's permissions sync, the identity provider setup for OIDC or SAML and SCIM, the deployment target (cloud, on-premise or region-specific, all listed under Enterprise), and whether models run locally through Ollama or vLLM or through a hosted provider. Internal approvals also matter: security review, data classification and change windows. Ask for a fixed-scope plan that lists milestones, deliverables and the inputs your team must supply on each date.

A platform team can run Onyx alone if it already operates Kubernetes or Docker, manages PostgreSQL and search clusters, and has time to handle upgrades and monitoring. The Community Edition is open source, so you can start without a license purchase. Recurring work includes tracking releases, such as Onyx v4.9.2 published on October 15, 2026, and the Helm chart, version 0.9.17 as of October 16, 2026, testing each upgrade against your connectors, and restoring from backups. Outside help can cover a one-time implementation, hardening and documentation under a fixed scope, or an ongoing retainer for upgrades and support. Decide early which of these tasks your staff will own after handover.

Your identity team registers Onyx as an application with your identity provider, configures OIDC or SAML, maps groups to roles for RBAC, and sets up SCIM provisioning if you need automated user lifecycle changes. Connector setup needs service accounts or app registrations for each source, such as SharePoint, Google Drive or Confluence, and permission sync only works if those accounts can read the permissions the source application holds. Your infrastructure team provides compute, storage, DNS, certificates, backups and network paths to each model provider, or confirms that all models run locally for an air-gapped setup. Document these owners in the scope before work begins.

The license terms and the stored data are separate questions, and the supplied facts do not say that Enterprise code stores different data categories. The Enterprise feature list includes usage analytics and query history auditing, so query records and usage data are kept in some form when those features are on. Confirm what is logged, where it is stored, how long it is retained, who can read it, whether user identifiers or document content appear in logs, and whether everything stays inside your environment. Ask the same questions about SCIM, which handles user provisioning data. Code in the ee directories falls under the Onyx Enterprise License, so check that terms with Onyx as well.

A fixed-scope quote should separate one-time work from recurring costs and name who is paid for each. The cost components are the implementation fee for planning, integration, hardening and documentation, the Onyx license tier you choose, your own cloud or hardware, and any model API usage charged by hosted providers. DeployOpen does not publish a price list, so the quote follows from the written scope. Ask for the named connectors, identity integrations, deployment target, acceptance criteria, exclusions, the Onyx license tier and who buys it, and the terms of any retainer for upgrades and support. Compare quotes on the same list of deliverables.

Onyx's pricing page lists the Business plan at $20 per user per month billed annually, and it lists Enterprise as priced on request. The page places OIDC and SAML SSO, on-premise deployments and region-specific deployments under Enterprise, which includes everything in Business. Confirm whether Business applies to a self-hosted Community deployment at all, and whether it includes SCIM, RBAC, usage analytics or query auditing, since those features are not itemized in the supplied pricing details. Ask Onyx for a written Enterprise quote that states the per-user basis, the billing period, the minimum seat count and the renewal terms. The published Onyx pricing page is the natural starting point for that conversation.