In this comprehensive guide, we compare Nuclia and SimplyRetrieve across various parameters including features, pricing, performance, and customer support to help you make the best decision for your business needs.
Overview
Welcome to the comparison between Nuclia and SimplyRetrieve!
Here are some unique insights on Nuclia:
Nuclia gives developers a deep toolkit for RAG: rich APIs, SDKs, and a CLI that pull from PDFs, web pages, and messy unstructured data—with agents to keep everything in sync. If you like tuning every knob in the pipeline, Nuclia has you covered.
That freedom, though, means a steeper ramp-up than “done-for-you” platforms.
And here's more information on SimplyRetrieve:
SimplyRetrieve is an open-source RAG stack you run on your own hardware. It keeps data in-house and pairs with open-source LLMs, giving developers full visibility into the pipeline.
Expect hands-on setup—GPU drivers, Python deps, scripts—before you’re up and running.
Enjoy reading and exploring the differences between
Nuclia and SimplyRetrieve.
Detailed Feature Comparison
Features
Nuclia
SimplyRetrieve
CustomGPTRECOMMENDED
Data Ingestion & Knowledge Sources
Indexes just about any unstructured data, in any language—PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, web pages, you name it. [Nuclia Documentation]
Runs OCR on images and converts speech in audio / video to text, so everything becomes searchable. [Nuclia Website]
Lets you ingest data programmatically via REST API, Python / JS SDKs, a CLI, or a Sync Agent for nonstop updates. [Nuclia Docs]
The Sync Agent watches connected repos (cloud drives, sitemaps, etc.) and auto-indexes any changes.
Uses a hands-on, file-based flow: drop PDFs, text, DOCX, PPTX, HTML, etc. into a folder and run a script to embed them.
A new GUI Knowledge-Base editor lets you add docs on the fly, but there’s no web crawler or auto-refresh yet.
Lets you ingest more than 1,400 file formats—PDF, DOCX, TXT, Markdown, HTML, and many more—via simple drag-and-drop or API.
Crawls entire sites through sitemaps and URLs, automatically indexing public help-desk articles, FAQs, and docs.
Turns multimedia into text on the fly: YouTube videos, podcasts, and other media are auto-transcribed with built-in OCR and speech-to-text.
View Transcription Guide
Connects to Google Drive, SharePoint, Notion, Confluence, HubSpot, and more through API connectors or Zapier.
See Zapier Connectors
Supports both manual uploads and auto-sync retraining, so your knowledge base always stays up to date.
Integrations & Channels
No-code widget generator lets you drop a search or Q&A panel onto your site in minutes. [Nuclia No-Code]
No one-click Slack or Teams bots out of the box, but the REST API / SDKs make custom bots easy.
Works with n8n and Zapier, so you can hook Nuclia into thousands of other services. [n8n Integration]
API-first philosophy means you can embed Nuclia search or Q&A into any channel you like.
Ships with a local Gradio GUI and Python scripts for queries—no out-of-the-box Slack or site widget.
Want other channels? Write a small wrapper that forwards messages to your local chatbot.
Embeds easily—a lightweight script or iframe drops the chat widget into any website or mobile app.
Offers ready-made hooks for Slack, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Facebook Messenger.
Explore API Integrations
Connects with 5,000+ apps via Zapier and webhooks to automate your workflows.
Supports secure deployments with domain allowlisting and a ChatGPT Plugin for private use cases.
Core Chatbot Features
Powers AI Search and generative Q&A on your data, returning “trusted answers” drawn straight from your content. [Nuclia Homepage]
Shows source citations so users can see exactly where each answer came from.
Auto-summarizes long docs and can run entity recognition or AI classification.
Handles both one-shot Q→A and multi-turn chat in the same flexible interface.
Runs a retrieval-augmented chatbot on open-source LLMs, streaming tokens live in the Gradio UI.
Primarily single-turn Q&A; long-term memory is limited in this release.
Includes a “Retrieval Tuning Module” so you can see—and tweak—how answers are built from the data.
Powers retrieval-augmented Q&A with GPT-4 and GPT-3.5 Turbo, keeping answers anchored to your own content.
Reduces hallucinations by grounding replies in your data and adding source citations for transparency.
Benchmark Details
Handles multi-turn, context-aware chats with persistent history and solid conversation management.
Speaks 90+ languages, making global rollouts straightforward.
Includes extras like lead capture (email collection) and smooth handoff to a human when needed.
Customization & Branding
No-code widget offers basic styling; deeper branding means building your own front-end on the API.
You can set a custom system prompt to tweak tone and style. [Nuclia Docs]
Develop your own UI for a fully branded experience—API flexibility makes it doable.
Default Gradio interface is pretty plain, with minimal theming.
For a branded UI you’ll tweak source code or build your own front end.
Fully white-labels the widget—colors, logos, icons, CSS, everything can match your brand.
White-label Options
Provides a no-code dashboard to set welcome messages, bot names, and visual themes.
Lets you shape the AI’s persona and tone using pre-prompts and system instructions.
Uses domain allowlisting to ensure the chatbot appears only on approved sites.
L L M Model Options
Model-agnostic: use OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Google PaLM 2, Cohere, Anthropic, and more.
“100 % private generative AI” mode keeps everything on Nuclia-hosted infrastructure if you prefer. [Privacy & Security]
Hooks into Hugging Face so you can drop in open-source or domain models. [HFÂ Integration]
Swap or blend models to hit the right cost-vs-quality balance; local models take extra setup.
Defaults to WizardVicuna-13B, but you can swap in any Hugging Face model if you have the GPUs.
Full control over model choice, though smaller open models won’t match GPT-4 for depth.
Taps into top models—OpenAI’s GPT-4, GPT-3.5 Turbo, and even Anthropic’s Claude for enterprise needs.
Automatically balances cost and performance by picking the right model for each request.
Model Selection Details
Uses proprietary prompt engineering and retrieval tweaks to return high-quality, citation-backed answers.
Handles all model management behind the scenes—no extra API keys or fine-tuning steps for you.
Developer Experience ( A P I & S D Ks)
Rich REST APIs, Python / JS SDKs, and a CLI cover everything from ingestion to querying. [Ingestion Docs]
Index first, query later—modular design fits nicely into dev workflows.
Step-by-step ingestion and custom retrieval logic are fully supported.
Self-host NucliaDB if you need on-prem; open-source repos and samples help you get started fast.
Interaction happens via Python scripts—there’s no formal REST API or SDK.
Integrations usually call those scripts as subprocesses or add your own wrapper.
Ships a well-documented REST API for creating agents, managing projects, ingesting data, and querying chat.
APIÂ Documentation
Offers open-source SDKs—like the Python customgpt-client—plus Postman collections to speed integration.
Open-Source SDK
Backs you up with cookbooks, code samples, and step-by-step guides for every skill level.
Integration & Workflow
Plug Nuclia into ETL or CI/CD so data keeps flowing and indexing stays up to date. [Nuclia Capabilities]
Call the high-level “/ask” endpoint or split it into search + LLM steps—your choice.
Automate via n8n, Zapier, or feed it from your data lake for large-scale ops.
Hybrid and on-prem deployments are available when data must stay in-house.
Run it locally: prep a GPU box, drop data, run prepare.py to embed, then chat.py for the Gradio UI.
Updating content means re-running scripts or using the new Knowledge tab; scaling is a manual process.
Gets you live fast with a low-code dashboard: create a project, add sources, and auto-index content in minutes.
Fits existing systems via API calls, webhooks, and Zapier—handy for automating CRM updates, email triggers, and more.
Auto-sync Feature
Slides into CI/CD pipelines so your knowledge base updates continuously without manual effort.
Performance & Accuracy
Markets itself as “quality-based” RAG—focused on trusted, source-linked answers. [Nuclia Overview]
Tune semantic vs. keyword weighting and thresholds for domain precision.
Summaries and entity extraction enrich your corpus for better Q&A.
Scales to large datasets; speed and cost depend on your chosen LLM and hosting.
Open-source models run slower than managed clouds—expect a few to 10 + seconds per reply on a single GPU.
Accuracy is fine when the right doc is found, but smaller models can struggle on complex, multi-hop queries.
Delivers sub-second replies with an optimized pipeline—efficient vector search, smart chunking, and caching.
Independent tests rate median answer accuracy at 5/5—outpacing many alternatives.
Benchmark Results
Always cites sources so users can verify facts on the spot.
Maintains speed and accuracy even for massive knowledge bases with tens of millions of words.
We hope you found this comparison of Nuclia vs
SimplyRetrieve helpful.
Nuclia is great when you want fine control and don’t mind extra configuration. If you’d rather click a few buttons and be done, a more turnkey option may fit better.
If local control and privacy outweigh convenience, SimplyRetrieve is a solid DIY route. Just be ready for the ongoing maintenance that comes with a self-hosted system.
Stay tuned for more updates!
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