Glean
Glean is enterprise search that respects who you are: it indexes the organisation's applications and answers questions with citations, showing each person only what their permissions allow. The knowledge sprawl across drives, wikis, tickets and chats becomes one queryable surface.
Its Work AI direction builds on that foundation: assistants and agents grounded in company knowledge, with the permission-awareness that makes enterprise deployment survivable.
It is bought at organisational scale: the indexing, connectors and governance assume hundreds of seats and a real IT function.
- Cost
- Enterprise
- Ease
- Model
- Hosted service
- Checked
- August 2026
Prices, plans and model versions change fast: this is a mid-2026 snapshot; check the tool's official site for the latest.
Best for
- Search across the organisation's applications at once
- Permission-aware answers that respect access rights
- Cited answers grounded in company content
- Assistants and agents on the same governed foundation
- Organisations drowning in knowledge sprawl
Less suited to
Small teams are outside the shape: the connectors, indexing and governance assume enterprise scale, and the procurement matches. Below that, workspace-native AI covers most of the need.
Answer quality also inherits the estate's hygiene: stale documents produce well-cited stale answers.
Costs & data, in short
Enterprise per-seat pricing by agreement; procurement-grade rather than credit-card SaaS.
Glean indexes your company systems with permissions preserved; its security model is the product, review it accordingly.
Plans
| Glean Core Suite | Price on applicationno list price published |
|---|---|
| Glean Model Hub Usage | Price on applicationusage billed at API rates |
Prices as of August 2026. Prices and plans change regularly. Check with the provider before you buy.
In practice
How Glean is used, area by area.
Jobs
Legal & compliance
Search across everything is exactly what a compliance function cannot allow
Search across everything is exactly what a compliance function cannot allow, which is why the permission model is the product rather than a feature of it. Glean's connectors sync each source's access controls and filter results to what the current user is already allowed to see, so the index does not become a way around permissions nobody intended to grant. For a regulated organisation that is the precondition for deploying search at all, and it is the question to put to any competitor first.
Example tasks
- Search across systems without widening anyone's access
- Confirm results respect the source application's permissions
- Give a regulated team retrieval it can defend in review
- Reduce the copies made because material was hard to find
- Put the permission model to competing vendors as the first question
Limits
You need a records or e-discovery system; this finds and answers, it does not hold the legal record.
Compares
| vs | Pick Glean when | Pick the other when |
|---|---|---|
| Gemini NotebookFull comparison → | Glean treats the permission model as the product: connectors sync each source's access controls so the index never becomes a way around permissions nobody intended to grant, and fewer copies get made because material was hard to find | the question is what these specific documents say, with the clause cited to prove it |
| PerplexityFull comparison → | Glean gives a regulated team retrieval it can defend in review, though it finds and answers rather than holding the legal record | the need is a cited first pass on a regulatory question, with current rules and jurisdiction differences returned as links |
| Microsoft CopilotFull comparison → | Glean confirms every result still respects the source application's own permissions and puts the permission model to any competing vendor as the first question | legal work already stays inside a Microsoft tenant the firm trusts, with enterprise data protection and IT governance in place before the work starts |
| Google GeminiFull comparison → | Glean searches across systems without widening anyone's access, which is the condition a compliance function attaches before any search is allowed at all | very long contracts and regulatory texts have to fit in context and come back as plain-language summaries |
Operations
Glean removes the where-is-that-document tax on operations
Glean removes the where-is-that-document tax on operations. Policies, process docs and past decisions surface from wherever they live across the application estate, permissions intact, with citations attached, which cuts the interruptions that make ops teams the company's human search engine and gives every answer a source someone can check. The value tracks how messy the tool sprawl is, which is precisely the condition operations teams inherit. Scale draws the boundary: below enterprise size, workspace-native AI covers most of the need, since the connectors, indexing and governance assume hundreds of seats and a real IT function. Content hygiene also remains your job, because stale documents produce well-cited stale answers.
Example tasks
- Find the current version of any process across systems
- Answer operational questions with citations to the source
- Surface who owns what from the knowledge itself
- Cut duplicate-question load with self-serve answers
- Audit where knowledge actually lives across the estate
Limits
Operations teams below enterprise scale get most of the value from their workspace suite's own search and AI; Glean's machinery pays off when the app estate is genuinely sprawling. Content hygiene remains your job.
Compares
| vs | Pick Glean when | Pick the other when |
|---|---|---|
| Notion AI | Glean removes the where-is-that-document tax across the whole app estate, surfacing policies, process docs and past decisions from wherever they live with permissions intact | the team's knowledge concentrates in one workspace below enterprise scale |
| GuruFull comparison → | Glean removes the where-is-that-document tax without asking anyone to curate first, and its value tracks how messy the sprawl is, which is precisely the condition operations inherits | the process canon needs owners and verification states, so an answer comes from an SOP somebody still stands behind |
| Sana (Workday)Full comparison → | Glean stops operations being the company's human search engine, cutting the duplicate-question load and surfacing who owns what from the knowledge itself | the gap is that knowledge exists but does not reach people, and onboarding should run on learning paths personalised by role |
Productivity & personal assistant
The daily productivity problem in a large company is not writing
The daily productivity problem in a large company is not writing, it is finding: the document exists, someone has already answered the question, and neither is where you would look. Glean indexes the app estate behind connectors and answers from it, so the assistant's usefulness scales with how much of your work already lives in connected systems rather than with how well you prompt. That is the opposite trade from a general assistant, which knows a great deal about the world and nothing about your company until you paste it in.
Example tasks
- Answer a question from material already in connected systems
- Find the current version of a document without knowing where it lives
- Identify who has worked on something before starting
- Surface prior answers to a repeated internal question
- Reach across systems in one query rather than searching each
Limits
A small team on one or two tools, where the index has little to cover and a general assistant is cheaper and simpler.
Compares
| vs | Pick Glean when | Pick the other when |
|---|---|---|
| Slack AIFull comparison → | Glean starts from the observation that the daily problem in a large company is not writing but finding: the document exists, someone has already answered the question, and neither is where you would look | the team thinks out loud in one workspace and a recap should compress a missed day into a minute |
| Microsoft CopilotFull comparison → | Glean finds the current version of a document without anyone knowing where it lives and surfaces the answer someone already gave to the same internal question before | Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams are where the day already happens and tenant permissions should decide what the assistant can see |
| Google GeminiFull comparison → | Glean identifies who has worked on something before you start, which is a question no amount of drafting capability answers | the working day sits inside Google Workspace and the assistant should be in the same place |
Tasks
Search & knowledge retrieval
Glean is enterprise search done as a product rather than a feature
Glean is enterprise search done as a product rather than a feature. It indexes the whole tool sprawl (Drive, Slack, Jira, wikis, tickets) and answers questions from all of it at once, with each person seeing only what their permissions allow, which is the feature that makes enterprise deployment survivable and the price justifiable. Assistants and agents build on the same governed foundation. It is bought by organisations drowning in their own knowledge, at a scale where the answer exists somewhere and nobody can find it. The shape excludes the rest: small teams get most of the value from workspace-native AI, citation-first web research and personal corpus tools solve different problems, and answer quality inherits the estate's hygiene.
Example tasks
- Search every connected system from one box
- Get cited answers that respect permissions
- Find the decision, the document and the person together
- Ground assistants in governed company knowledge
- Onboard new joiners onto the organisation's actual knowledge
Limits
Citation-first web research and personal knowledge tools solve different problems; Glean is specifically the enterprise's internal estate. Permission-awareness is the feature that justifies the price, and only enterprises need it.
Compares
| vs | Pick Glean when | Pick the other when |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft CopilotFull comparison → | Glean turns knowledge sprawled across applications beyond any single suite, drives, wikis, tickets and chats, into one governed, cited search surface with permissions respected | the knowledge already lives in the Microsoft estate, in email, chats, meetings and files |
| GuruFull comparison → | Glean indexes the whole tool sprawl and answers from all of it at once, so the answer that exists somewhere becomes findable without anyone curating it first | retrieval is a trust problem rather than a reach problem, and the answer exists in several versions with nobody sure which to believe |
| Sana (Workday)Full comparison → | Glean returns the decision, the document and the person together, so a new joiner is onboarded onto what the organisation actually knows rather than what someone wrote down for them | the agents should act as well as answer, and a learning platform grows from the same foundation |
| Gemini NotebookFull comparison → | Glean's permission-awareness is the feature that justifies the price, and it lets assistants and agents build on the same governed foundation rather than each getting its own access | the work is per-corpus and personal, a defined set of documents rather than the whole estate |
| PerplexityFull comparison → | Glean is specifically the enterprise's internal estate, which is a different problem from citation-first web research rather than a weaker version of it | the question is about the world outside the company and the answer should arrive with numbered public sources |
| Slack AIFull comparison → | Glean indexes Slack as one source among Drive, Jira, wikis and tickets, so an answer assembled from two systems at once is possible | the working conversation is the corpus and the team thinks out loud there |
| Google GeminiFull comparison → | Glean searches every connected system from one box, which is the shape of the problem when the answer exists somewhere and nobody can find it | the answers need to draw on the live web and your own Google Workspace at once |
Where to start
Not sure what to adopt first?
Five quick questions about your job, task and constraints. We'll suggest your top three tools, plus the one to try first.
Alternatives
Same category, different strengths.
Appears in these stacks
Curated combinations this tool is part of.
Common questions
Is Glean free?
No: Glean is enterprise software, priced per organisation.
Where does Glean fit best?
Glean fits best in Operations and Productivity & personal assistant; see its practice notes for how.
Before sharing confidential or personal data, check this tool's data-governance and training policies. They differ between providers and can change.
Last checked: August 2026