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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Open-source Deep Research across workplace applications

I’ve been using deep research on OpenAI and Perplexity and it’s been just amazing at gathering data across a lot of related and chained searches. Just earlier today, I asked “What are some marquee tech companies / hot startups (not including the giants like FAAMG, Samsung, Nvidia etc.)”. It’s a pretty involved question and looking up “marquee tech startups” or "hot tech startups" on Google gave me nothing useful. Deep research on both ChatGPT and Perplexity gave really high quality responses with ChatGPT siding on slightly larger scaleups and Perplexity siding more on up and coming…

Onyx is an open-source deep research tool for workplace applications that performs multi-step, interconnected searches to answer complex questions. It integrates with company applications like Google Drive to gather… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 1 we have checked on their own sites, 1 of them free or with a free tier.

  1. 1
    Onyx▲165

    The open source AI teammate you've dreamed of

    2025 · onyx.app · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    Agent capable of doing deep research for you independently

    2025 · openai.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    We built a search engine interface on top of OpenAI GPT 3.5 and Microsoft Bing that summarizes and cites top search results in response to natural language questions. By using search results, the AI is able to reference recent news and provide citations for specific facts. Our interface offers concise answers, without having to click through links, scroll past irrelevant content, or read ads. No login is required; no personal data is collected. We believe in the power of combining the intuitive UI of web search with the intelligence of large language models. The search engine does indexing…

    2025 · perplexity.ai · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    Save hours of time in-depth research and analysis

    2025 · perplexity.ai · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    Find all the best AI models in one single platform

    2024 · its alternatives →

  6. 6
    OpenOs▲280

    ChatGpt for user, financial & marketing data analysis

    2023 · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    Hey Hackernews- it’s Tim Lenardo and I’m launching v1 of Onit today! Onit is ChatGPT Desktop, but with local mode and support for other model providers (Anthropic, GoogleAI, etc). It's also like Cursor Chat, but everywhere on your computer - not just in your IDE! Onit is open-source! You can download a pre-built version from our website: www.getonit.ai Or build directly from the source code: https://github.com/synth-inc/onit We built this because we believe: Universal Access: AI assistants should be accessible from anywhere on my computer, not just in the browser or in…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    A customized, superassistant for every member of your team

    2024 · openai.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9IB

    Hi HN, I built this out of frustration of the evergrowing list of AI models and features to try and to fit my workflow. The visual approach clicks for me so i went with it, it provides more freedom and control of the outcome, because predictable results and increased productivity is what I’m after when using conversational AI. The app is packed with features, my most used are prompt library, voice input and text search, narration is useful too. The app is local-first and works right in the browser, no sign up needed and it's absolutely free to try. BYOAK – bring your own API Keys. Let me…

    2024 · grafychat.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10
    Noodle Seedfree tier, from $30/mo▲432

    Hi HN! I’m Uzair, Founding Engineer of Noodle Seed. We enable businesses to deploy native apps inside ChatGPT conversations when users need recommendations. What we built: A multi-tenant no-code platform that helps businesses create custom ChatGPT Apps. When someone asks “find me a legal firm in Austin,” businesses using our platform appear with their own branded app - complete with UI components, interactive elements, and real-time information. Not random results from old training data, but actual custom experiences with each business’s branding. Try it: We’re in limited beta with founding…

    Jan 2026 · noodleseed.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    The first ever AI peer reviewed research article just got approved. It’s kinda crazy how advanced AI have come to replace researchers. I've just been using Deep Research on ChatGPT and Perplexity a lot to write and research complex technical reports for my boss. He loves the reports and it has decreased my workload a ton but I still have some frustrations with it. None of them provide an API that gets me the same quality of output you would with the applications. I wanted something with more control on the LLMs, swappable with the reasoning new models that came out. Not just prompt →…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    Hey everyone, We have been building SecureAI Tools -- an open-source application layer for ChatGPT and ChatPDF-like AI tools. It works with locally running LLMs as well as with OpenAI-compatible APIs. For local LLMs, it supports Ollama which supports all the gguf/ggml models. Currently, it has two features: Chat-with-LLM, and Chat-with-PDFs. It is optimized for self-hosting use cases and comes with basic user management features. Here are some quick demos: * Chat with documents using OpenAI's GPT3.5 model: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br2D3G9O47s * Chat with documents…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    Last week I benchmarked my open-source Deep Research tool against ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. I caught OpenAI fabricating 4-5 citations that don't exist. Gemini reduced real hazard ratios by 30-40%. So I built ASK Mode: every answer gets automatically verified against a second round of sources. Each claim marked [OK], [??], or [NO]. - ~400 verified answers for $1 - 2-3 minutes per query - No RLHF nannying - it answers what you ask - Full verification report with every response The gap between chat (unverified, stale training data) and deep research (20+ minutes) needed filling.…

    Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    Hey HN, I am proud to show you guys that I have built an open source alternative to Azure OpenAI services. Azure OpenAI services was born out of companies needing enhanced security and access control for using different GPT models. I want to build an OSS version of Azure OpenAI services that people could self host in their own infrastructure. "How can I track LLM spend per API key?" "Can I create a development OpenAI API key with limited access for Bob?" "Can I see my LLM spend breakdown by models and endpoints?" "Can I create 100 OpenAI API keys that my students could use in a classroom…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    Hey HN! Over the past few months, I've been working on building Omni - a workplace search and chat platform that connects to apps like Google Drive/Gmail, Slack, Confluence, etc. Essentially an open-source alternative to Glean, fully self-hosted. I noticed that some orgs find Glean to be expensive and not very extensible. I wanted to build something that small to mid-size teams could run themselves, so I decided to build it all on Postgres (ParadeDB to be precise) and pgvector. No Elasticsearch, or dedicated vector databases. I figured Postgres is more than capable of handling the level…

    Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    Enterprise-grade security, privacy and powerful ChatGPT

    2023 · openai.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    I’ve been building a small hardware box that runs local LLMs like Mistral, Qwen and Llama, and exposes an OpenAI compatible API on your local network. There’s no cloud, no login system and no telemetry. I built it because a lot of small firms want ChatGPTbstyle tools but can’t use cloud AI for privacy or compliance reasons, and most don’t want to deal with GPU servers, drivers, Docker or model configs. The aim is to make local AI feel as simple as plugging in a router. Right now the box boots into a very simple web UI where you choose a model and start using it. The API follows the OpenAI…

    Nov 2025 · axis-one-psi.vercel.app · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    A new app for Slack that uses ChatGPT

    2023 · salesforce.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19
    Onyx▲18

    Open Source workspace for easy file management

    2023 · onyxapp.io · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    Codex-powered agents for teams.

    Apr 2026 · openai.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    After months of hard work, I'm thrilled to announce the launch of Chat Channels and Direct Messages on The Drive AI. Why Chat Channels? During my master’s program, managing extensive research, project discussions, and documents across platforms like Google Drive, Zotero, and Slack was a real challenge. Finding past discussions on Slack became harder as projects progressed, leading to inefficiencies and repeated questions. Imagine a platform where every research paper, project file, or document seamlessly integrates with persistent chat channels—a system that combines the best of document…

    2024 · thedrive.ai · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    Free, open-source alternative to OpenAI's Deep Research

    2025 · anotherwrapper.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    ChatGPT enterprise for small and midsize companies

    2023 · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    Hey hacker news, we launched a few weeks ago as a GPT-powered chatbot for developer docs, and quickly realized that the value of what we’re doing isn’t the chatbot itself. Rather, it’s the time we save developers by automating the extraction of data from their SaaS tools (Github, Zendesk, Salesforce, etc) and helping transform it to contextually relevant chunks that fit into GPT’s context window. A lot of companies are building prototypes with GPT right now and they’re all using some combination of Langchain/Llama Index + Weaviate/Pinecone + GPT3.5/GPT4 as their stack for…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →