The Best Glean Alternatives for AI Search in 2026

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. If you are still mapping the category itself, start with our guide to enterprise search.

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.

Pros:

• Answers are pulled live from your tools with the source attached, so results reflect what is true right now.
• Captures unwritten knowledge by asking the person who knows and keeping the reply for the next asker.
• Free to start with no seat minimum, with EU hosting and MCP access for your own models.

Cons:

• A new product with few public reviews and a short track record.
• A smaller connector library than Glean's.

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 published, with a Pro plan at $30 per user per month ($24 on annual billing), metered by monthly credits, plus a small free tier. 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.

Pros:

• Agents go beyond search: they draft documents, run workflows, and act on what they find.
• Published per-seat pricing with a free tier, so you can try it without a sales call.

Cons:

• Usage is metered by credits on top of the seat price, so heavy use can cost more than the sticker price.
• Getting value depends on someone building and maintaining agents, which is its own ongoing work.

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.

Pros:

• Federated queries avoid copying all your content into one central index.
• Positioned at a lower total cost than Glean for similar coverage.

Cons:

• Federated search leans on each source's own search API, so result quality varies by connector.
• Built for mid-market and enterprise rollouts, so a very small team carries more product than it needs.

4. Onyx

Best for: engineering teams that want an open-source, self-hostable option.

Onyx is the strongest open-source alternative, genuinely self-hostable, with 40+ connectors, AI chat, and agents. You can self-host the open-source version on your own infrastructure, or take the cloud Business plan at $20 per user per month, with a contact-sales Enterprise tier above it. The trade-off is that self-hosting is real work you own.

Pros:

• Open source and self-hostable, so your data can stay on your own infrastructure.
• The cloud Business plan has a clear published price at $20 per user per month.

Cons:

• Self-hosting means you own upgrades, scaling, and security work.
• No built-in way to capture knowledge that was never written down.

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.)

Pros:

• Cards set to require verification get a clear owner and a scheduled freshness check.
• A mature product with a large review base and established workflows.

Cons:

• The verified-card model is ongoing upkeep someone on your team owns.
• Pricing is custom and requires a sales conversation, with no public number to plan around.

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.

Pros:

• Minimal setup if your knowledge already lives in Notion.
• Included with Notion's Business and Enterprise plans, so there may be nothing extra to buy.

Cons:

• Reaching tools outside Notion depends on Notion AI Connectors, which require the Business or Enterprise plan and cover a fixed set of apps like Slack, Google Drive, and Jira.
• Answer quality depends on how well the workspace is maintained.

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.

Pros:

• Lives inside the suite your team already uses, so there is nothing new to roll out.
• Strong at surfacing conversations and files within its own suite.

Cons:

• Coverage largely stops at the edge of the suite; Slack reaches tools like Google Drive and Jira only through enterprise search connectors on its top enterprise plans.
• Microsoft Copilot is a paid add-on, and Slack reserves its deepest AI and search features for higher plans.

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	Free tier / $30/user/mo ($24 annual)	No	Indexed	No	Varies
GoSearch	Custom	Enterprise-oriented	Federated	No	Varies
Onyx	Free to self-host / $20/user/mo cloud	No	Indexed	No	Self-hosted
Guru	Custom (contact sales)	Not published	Verified wiki	Partial (verify workflow)	Varies
Notion AI	Included from Notion Business ($20/user/mo)	No	Within Notion	No	Varies
Glean	Custom (reported ~$50–75/user/mo)	~100 seats	Indexed	No	Varies

Pricing checked on vendor pricing pages in August 2026 and changes often; confirm current terms with each vendor.

Which one should you choose?

• If you are a large enterprise rolling out search to tens of thousands of employees with a dedicated team, choose Glean.
• If your engineers want to self-host and keep everything on your own infrastructure, choose Onyx.
• If your priority is agents that act on what they find rather than search alone, choose Dust.
• If you are a small or growing team that wants fresh, source-backed answers without an enterprise contract, choose Agentwork; it starts free, has no seat minimum, and closes knowledge gaps by asking the person who knows.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a free Glean alternative?

Yes. Agentwork is free to start with no seat minimum, and Onyx is open source, so you can self-host it without paying a license.

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.

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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.