The Best Glean Alternatives for AI Search in 2026
Looking for a Glean alternative? Compare the best AI workplace search and knowledge tools for 2026 on price, seat minimums, setup time, and data residency.
Glean is a strong product. It indexes the tools your company uses and puts an AI search box and assistant on top, and at enterprise scale it does that well. When someone searches for a Glean alternative, it is rarely because Glean fails at search. It is because the price, the seat minimum, or the time-to-value is wrong for their team.
This guide covers why teams shop for a Glean alternative, what to look for in one, and the seven options worth comparing in 2026, with an honest read on where each one is the better choice.
Why look for a Glean alternative?
The problem Glean solves is real. Answers are scattered across a dozen tools, and people burn hours hunting for them or asking a colleague. But Glean is built for large enterprises, and that shows up in three places.
Price and seat minimums. Glean does not publish standard pricing. Contracts are custom-quoted, typically around $50–$75 per user per month, with a minimum of roughly 100 seats. A paid proof of concept can run into the tens of thousands before you have signed anything. For a company of ten or forty people, the seat minimum alone means paying for users you do not have.
Time to value. Getting Glean into production commonly takes eight to twelve weeks of indexing, permission mapping, and testing. Its architecture copies and stores your content before it becomes searchable, which adds a lag between when something changes in a source tool and when the answer catches up.
Shape of the tool. Glean finds information but stops there. When the answer is not written down anywhere, search comes back empty, because there is nothing to index. Any one of these is reason enough to compare. Which capabilities a good alternative should have is the next question.
What to look for in a Glean alternative
When you compare options, work through these in order:
- Pricing that fits. Transparent pricing and a way to start small or free, without a seat minimum that makes a small team overpay.
- Fast setup. Value in days, not a multi-week indexing and rollout project.
- Fresh answers. Results pulled live from your tools, so an answer reflects what is true right now rather than the last crawl.
- Knowledge capture. A way to capture what was never written down by asking the person who knows, so gaps close rather than coming back empty.
- Resolved answers. A written answer with a citation, not a list of links to read.
- Per-person permissions. Every answer filtered to what the individual asker can see, across shared and personal sources.
- Openness and data residency. Knowledge reachable by your own models and agents over an open standard like MCP, and clear control over where your data is hosted, with an EU option if you need one.
The 7 best Glean alternatives
1. Agentwork
Best for: small and growing teams that want enterprise-grade answers without the enterprise contract, seat minimum, or rollout.
Agentwork is a shared knowledge layer that answers questions across the tools you already use, with the source attached so you can check it. It pulls answers live rather than relying on a stored index, so results reflect what is current. Where it goes beyond search: when an answer is not written down anywhere, Agentwork sends a request to the person who knows, captures their reply, and keeps it for the next person who asks, so the gaps close instead of coming back empty. Every answer is filtered to what the asker is allowed to see, your knowledge is reachable by your own models and agents over MCP, and you can choose EU data hosting. It is free to start, with per-seat pricing when you scale and no seat minimum.
Where Glean is the better choice: a large enterprise that needs a mature, heavily governed deployment across tens of thousands of employees.
2. Dust
Best for: teams that want AI agents to take action, not just find answers.
Dust pairs enterprise search with agents that can draft documents, run workflows, and act on what they find. Pricing is transparent, around $29 per user per month. If your priority is automating tasks on top of search, Dust is a strong fit. It is less focused on capturing answers that were never written down.
3. GoSearch
Best for: mid-market teams that want Glean-style federated search at a lower total cost.
GoSearch leads with a federated-first architecture and positions itself as the lower-TCO Glean alternative. If you like Glean's model but not its bill, it is worth a look. It is still aimed more at larger teams than at a ten-person company.
4. Onyx
Best for: engineering teams that want an open-source, self-hostable option.
Onyx is the strongest open-source alternative, MIT-licensed and genuinely self-hostable, with 40+ connectors, AI chat, and agents. It is free to run in the community edition, or around $20 per user per month on cloud. The trade-off is that self-hosting is real work you own.
5. Guru
Best for: teams that want answers to come from a human-verified wiki.
Guru pairs a verified company wiki with AI search, so answers come from cards a person has confirmed. That governance is the strength, and it is also ongoing upkeep someone has to own. If verified, curated knowledge matters more than low maintenance, Guru fits. (See our Guru alternatives guide for a deeper comparison.)
6. Notion AI
Best for: teams already living in Notion who want light Q&A over their workspace.
If your company's knowledge already sits in Notion, Notion AI answers questions over it with minimal setup. It is convenient inside that world but weaker at reaching across the many other tools where work actually happens.
7. Slack AI / Microsoft Copilot
Best for: teams that live inside a single suite and want search within it.
Slack AI and Microsoft Copilot bring AI search to the suite you are already in. They are the path of least resistance if nearly all your knowledge lives in one place, and they fall short once answers are spread across many disconnected tools.
Glean alternatives compared
| Tool | Starting price | Seat minimum | Answers pulled live | Captures unwritten knowledge | EU hosting |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agentwork | Free to start | None | Yes | Yes (asks the person who knows) | Yes |
| Dust | ~$29/user/mo | No | Indexed | No | Varies |
| GoSearch | Custom | Enterprise-oriented | Federated | No | Varies |
| Onyx | Free / ~$20/user/mo | No | Indexed | No | Self-hosted |
| Guru | ~$25/user/mo (10-seat min) | Yes | Verified wiki | Partial (verify workflow) | Varies |
| Notion AI | Add-on to Notion | No | Within Notion | No | Varies |
| Glean | ~$50–75/user/mo | ~100 seats | Indexed | No | Varies |
Pricing reflects publicly reported figures as of 2026 and changes often; confirm current terms with each vendor.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free Glean alternative?
Yes. Agentwork is free to start with no seat minimum, and Onyx offers a free open-source community edition you can self-host.
What is the best Glean alternative for small teams and startups?
Agentwork. Glean's roughly 100-seat minimum and custom enterprise pricing put it out of reach for most small companies, while Agentwork starts free and charges per seat only as you grow.
How much does Glean cost?
Glean does not publish pricing. Reported figures are around $50–$75 per user per month with a minimum of roughly 100 seats, plus possible add-ons and a paid proof of concept, so total spend often runs well into six figures for larger deployments.
Do I have to replace my existing wiki or docs?
No. Agentwork answers questions live across the tools you already use, so you do not need to migrate content or maintain a separate canonical wiki first.
Can these tools host data in the EU?
Some can. Agentwork offers an EU hosting option; check each vendor for current data-residency terms.
If you are comparing a Glean alternative, Agentwork answers across the tools you already use, asks the person who knows when something is undocumented, and keeps your data in the EU. Start free and see it on your own tools before you commit.