Glean
Glean Technologies, Inc. · Glean: Enterprise Search, Assistant and Agent Platform Grounded in Permission-Aware Company Context
Glean is an enterprise Work AI platform that indexes a company's apps under each source's permissions, then layers Glean Assistant, enterprise search and Glean Agents on top. Agents are built in natural language, a visual workflow builder or from Claude Code, Cursor and Codex, and can run on schedules or when something changes in Jira, Salesforce, Gmail, Slack and other tools. It suits large organizations that want one governed AI layer across many vendors' systems, sold through Glean's sales team.
Best for
Mid-size and large enterprises whose knowledge and work are spread across many vendors' apps, and that want one permission-aware search, assistant and agent platform, with model choice and central governance, rather than a separate AI assistant inside each suite
Not ideal for
Small teams that want self-serve sign-up and published per-seat pricing, organizations whose work lives almost entirely in one suite that already bundles AI (Microsoft 365, Google Workspace or Atlassian), and anyone needing an on-premises or air-gapped deployment
Who it's for
IT, AI platform and knowledge-management teams at mid-size and large enterprises, plus the business and engineering teams who build and run agents on top of company data
Capabilities
- Permission-aware enterprise search over a single-tenant hybrid index and knowledge graph, with connectors that mirror each source's access permissions
- Glean Assistant with fast, thinking and adaptive reasoning modes, Deep Research as a skill, Canvas for documents, slides and editable spreadsheets, and data analysis that runs code in an isolated environment
- Agent Builder with Auto mode, where you describe the outcome and the agent chooses tools and delegates subtasks to sub-agents, and Workflow mode for explicit steps, branches, loops and sub-agent hand-offs
- Agent triggers: chat message, input form, schedule, and content triggers that fire on events such as a new Jira ticket, a Salesforce record change, a new Gong call, a new Gmail or Outlook email, an upcoming calendar event or a new Slack message
- Read and write tools in connected apps, plus remote MCP servers connected as tools, with per-tool enablement, role-based tool access and optional write approval
- Independent agents (beta) that own a shared workflow with their own identity, a Slack presence and admin-managed service credentials for systems such as Jira, Salesforce, ServiceNow, GitHub, Datadog and Snowflake
- Headless agent builder: create, test, evaluate and publish Auto mode agents as spec.yaml and instructions.md files from Claude Code, Codex or Cursor through the Glean plugin, with changes reviewable in Git
- Model Hub with OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, Amazon Nova and open models, plus Glean's Waldo model and Auto routing, through Glean's Universal Model Key or the customer's own provider keys
- Glean MCP server that exposes search, chat, document reading and published agents to hosts such as ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot Studio and Gemini Enterprise, and an A2A server and host for agent-to-agent calls
- REST APIs (Search, Chat, Agents, Indexing and Tools) and a Web SDK for embedding Glean in custom apps
- Agent governance: draft and publish review, version history and rollback, import and export, sharing by identity-provider group, agent insights, usage limits, and OTLP export of agent traces
- Glean Protect controls including permission enforcement, sensitive content detection, AI security policies and audit logs; Glean's security page lists SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, ISO 42001, HIPAA, GDPR and TX-RAMP Level 2
- Surfaces in the browser extension, desktop apps for macOS and Windows, iOS and Android apps, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Excel
Limitations
- No public price list: seats are licensed per user per month through Glean's sales team, and model and agent usage is billed on top as Model Hub usage or FlexCredits
- Agent run costs vary with the connectors searched, steps, memory, tools and model used, so heavy agent use is hard to forecast in advance
- Built for company-wide rollouts: value depends on connecting and permissioning many sources, which takes admin work and is not a self-serve setup for small teams
- Scheduled agent runs are terminated after roughly 30 minutes, and every run has a cap on tool calls and on the size of tool responses
- Scheduled and background runs can only execute write tools that admins have allowed to run without user confirmation; otherwise the run fails
- Content triggers on recommended sources typically fire within minutes, but experimental sources such as Google Drive, GitHub and OneDrive can lag by a couple of hours
- Independent agents are in beta, and their creation flow supports a Slack presence only; available templates, tools and credentials depend on the deployment
- The headless builder supports Auto mode agents only, not Workflow mode
- Customer Hosted runs in your own GCP or AWS account but is still operated by Glean as a managed service; no on-premises, air-gapped or customer-operated deployment is documented
- Model choice depends on deployment: with your own keys, cloud-hosted models are limited to your deployment's cloud, so GCP-hosted customers can't use Amazon Bedrock
Use cases
- Asking Glean Assistant why a pipeline metric dropped and getting an answer that combines Salesforce, Snowflake or BI data with the Slack threads and docs behind it
- Running an agent whenever a P0 Jira ticket is created to summarize the issue, pull similar incidents and runbooks, and propose next steps
- Updating a Salesforce opportunity and drafting a follow-up email after each Gong call is transcribed
- Scheduling a weekly digest of open support tickets or account risks for a team
- Deploying an on-call independent agent in Slack that investigates escalations across Slack, Jira and GitHub under its own service credentials
- Letting engineers build and version an internal agent from Claude Code or Cursor, then publishing it to the whole company through Glean's Agent Library
Our take
Glean's case rests on its index rather than on any single agent feature. Years of enterprise search work give it a permission-mirrored knowledge graph across many vendors' apps, and its agents, assistant, MCP server and A2A endpoints all draw on that same layer. That makes it a strong fit for companies with a mixed stack that want one governed place to build, share and audit agents, and its headless builder and model choice keep it useful to engineering teams as well as business users. The costs are real. Pricing is opaque, with seats plus usage-based model or credit charges, the rollout depends on connector and identity work across the company, and the most autonomous pieces, independent agents, are still in beta with a Slack-only presence. Buyers living mostly inside Microsoft 365, Google Workspace or Atlassian should first check what their suite's bundled AI already covers.
Who should use it
Enterprises with knowledge spread across Slack, Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, Salesforce, Jira, ServiceNow and similar tools that want permission-aware AI search and governed agents in one platform; AI and IT platform teams standardizing agent building, model access and governance; and engineering teams that want to build company agents as code from Claude Code, Cursor or Codex.
Who should skip it
Small teams that need self-serve sign-up and transparent per-seat pricing, organizations that can only run AI on-premises or air-gapped, and companies whose work lives almost entirely in one vendor's suite with bundled AI agents.
Strengths
- Works across many vendors' apps rather than inside one suite, with source permissions enforced on every read
- Several ways to build agents: natural-language Auto mode, a step-by-step Workflow mode, and code-first headless building from Claude Code, Cursor or Codex
- Agents can run on schedules or on events in tools like Jira, Salesforce, Gong, Gmail and Slack, and act through write tools and MCP servers
- Model-agnostic Model Hub with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Amazon and open models, and support for customer-supplied keys
- Open in both directions: MCP and A2A servers let ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot Studio and Gemini Enterprise use Glean's context and agents
- Single-tenant deployment, with a Customer Hosted option in your own GCP or AWS account
Weaknesses
- No published seat or credit prices, and usage-based model or FlexCredit charges sit on top of seats
- A heavy rollout that depends on connector, identity and governance setup
- Independent agents are still in beta and limited to a Slack presence in their creation flow
- Scheduled runs time out after about 30 minutes and scheduled writes need admin pre-approval
- No documented on-premises or air-gapped option; even Customer Hosted is operated by Glean
Glean pricing
Glean Core Suite
Custom (per user, per month)
- Enterprise search, knowledge graph and connectors
- Agent building, triggers, templates and Agent Library
- Glean Protect, insights and admin controls
- Search API, Indexing and Tools APIs, and Web SDK included in seats
Glean Model Hub Usage
Upfront commit, billed at model or hosting-provider API rates
- Powers Assistant reasoning modes, Deep Research, Canvas and agent runs
- Glean's Waldo model listed at $0.50 input / $2.50 output per million tokens
- Chat and Agents APIs draw from this usage
Glean Enterprise Flex
Custom (per-user seats plus pooled FlexCredits)
- Unlimited fast-mode Assistant queries on basic and standard models (premium models consume FlexCredits)
- Thinking and adaptive queries on standard models included up to 100 per user per week
- Agent runs and premium-model queries consume FlexCredits
- Additional FlexCredit packs available
Note: Glean sells through its sales team and does not publish seat or FlexCredit prices; glean.com/pricing redirects to the homepage. The two licensing models above come from Glean's documentation. API use included in Core Suite seats covers normal human-scale usage; machine-scale volumes without matching seats are billed extra. Enterprise Flex seats and credits are discounted for customers who bring their own LLM keys or host Glean in their own cloud.
Technical specs
Modalities
Text, Image, Voice
API pricing
Under Core Suite, the Search, Indexing and Tools APIs are included in seats while the Chat and Agents APIs and LLM-backed MCP calls draw Model Hub usage; under Enterprise Flex, Client API calls consume FlexCredits
Available models
Where Glean excels
Engineering on-call triage
An independent agent with its own Slack presence and service credentials can investigate an escalation across Slack, Jira and GitHub and suggest next steps before an engineer picks it up, with every action traceable to the agent.
Post-call CRM hygiene for sales
A content trigger on new Gong calls lets an agent extract deal details, update the Salesforce opportunity and draft the follow-up email without a rep pasting in the transcript.
Self-serve analytics with business context
Glean for Data Analysis pairs warehouse and BI data with the documents and conversations that explain it, so employees can ask why a number moved and turn the analysis into a recurring agent report.
Company-wide agent platform with central governance
Draft-and-publish review, role-based tool access, usage limits, agent insights and trace export let an AI platform team let many departments build agents without losing control of what they can touch.
Glean vs. competitors
Glean vs. Microsoft Copilot
Microsoft Copilot is built into Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams and centers on Microsoft 365 data. Glean indexes Microsoft 365 alongside many non-Microsoft apps with their permissions, offers models from several providers, and can itself be called from Copilot Studio through MCP or A2A.
Glean vs. Gemini for Business
Gemini for Business (sold as Gemini Enterprise) is Google Cloud's work agent with connectors to Workspace, Microsoft 365 and business systems, built around Gemini models. Glean covers similar ground with a vendor-neutral knowledge graph, a multi-provider Model Hub and a visual and code-first agent builder, and it can plug into Gemini Enterprise as an MCP server or A2A agent.
Glean vs. Cohere North
Cohere North targets regulated organizations that need AI in their own VPC, on-premises or air-gapped. Glean runs as single-tenant SaaS or in your own GCP or AWS account, but always operated by Glean, and leans on search depth, connectors and model choice across providers.
Glean vs. Rovo
Rovo is Atlassian's AI layer, strongest when work lives in Jira and Confluence, with usage metered in Rovo credits inside Atlassian plans. Glean treats Atlassian as one connector among many and suits companies whose knowledge is spread across several vendors.
Glean vs. Agentforce
Agentforce builds agents inside Salesforce for service, sales and commerce, grounded in Salesforce data. Glean agents can read and update Salesforce records too, but sit above it as a cross-app layer that also draws on Slack, Jira, email and documents.
Frequently asked questions
What is Glean?
Glean is an enterprise AI platform from Glean Technologies. It connects to a company's apps, indexes their content into a knowledge graph while mirroring each source's permissions, and offers enterprise search, a chat assistant (Glean Assistant) and an agent platform (Glean Agents) on top of that context.
What can Glean Agents do?
Glean Agents follow instructions, use company knowledge and call tools to read and write in connected apps. They can be built in Auto mode, where the agent plans its own path and can delegate to sub-agents, or in Workflow mode with explicit steps and branches. They start from a chat message, a form, a schedule, or a content trigger such as a new Jira ticket, a Salesforce update, a Gong call or a new email. Independent agents, in beta, run shared workflows under their own identity and service credentials.
How much does Glean cost?
Glean doesn't publish prices; you buy it through its sales team. Its documentation describes two licensing models. Glean Core Suite is licensed per user per month and includes search, agent building and the Search, Indexing and Tools APIs, with Assistant features and agent runs that call models billed as Model Hub usage at model or hosting-provider API rates against an upfront commit. Enterprise Flex combines per-user seats with a pooled allowance of FlexCredits that agent runs and premium-model queries consume, with more credits bought as needed. Under Enterprise Flex, seats and credits are discounted for customers who bring their own LLM keys or host Glean in their own cloud.
Which AI models does Glean use?
Glean's Model Hub lists models from OpenAI (via OpenAI or Azure), Anthropic Claude (via Google Vertex AI, Amazon Bedrock or a direct Anthropic key), Google Gemini, Amazon Nova, open models hosted through Fireworks or Baseten, and Glean's own Waldo model. Organizations can use Glean's Universal Model Key or their own provider keys, and admins can restrict which models are available.
Can Glean be self-hosted?
Not in the traditional sense. Glean offers Glean Hosted, a single-tenant SaaS deployment, and Customer Hosted (formerly Cloud-Prem), where Glean deploys an isolated instance inside your own GCP or AWS account but still operates, upgrades and monitors it as a managed service. Glean's docs say customers can't deploy or patch the services themselves.
Does Glean work with ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot?
Yes. The Glean MCP server lets MCP hosts such as ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot Studio and Gemini Enterprise use Glean search, chat, document reading and published agents under each user's permissions. The Glean plugin brings the same to Claude Code, Codex and Cursor, and Glean's A2A server lets platforms such as Gemini Enterprise and Copilot Studio call Glean Assistant as a remote agent.
Glean vs Microsoft 365 Copilot: what is the difference?
Microsoft 365 Copilot is built into Microsoft's apps and draws mainly on Microsoft 365 data. Glean sits across vendors, indexing Microsoft 365 alongside tools like Slack, Salesforce, Jira and Google Workspace with their permissions, and lets organizations choose among models from several providers. Teams that work almost entirely in Microsoft 365 may get enough from Copilot; organizations with a mixed stack are Glean's main audience.
Integrations & fit
Alternatives to consider
Mid-size and large organizations, especially Google Cloud or Google Workspace customers, that want to give employees one governed agent for knowledge work, data analysis and light coding across Workspace, Microsoft 365, Slack and systems like Salesforce, Jira and BigQuery, with per-agent identity, audit trails and per-project spend caps
PaidMicrosoft
Individuals and teams using Microsoft 365 and Windows who want AI inside the apps they already use
Freemium
Cohere
Large enterprises and public-sector organizations in finance, healthcare, telecom, energy, manufacturing and government that want employees building and sharing agents and automations, but must keep data and inference in their own VPC, on-premises or air-gapped environment with per-user and per-group token limits and spend tracking down to each agent
Custom
Atlassian
Organizations already running projects, documentation and service work in Jira, Confluence and Jira Service Management cloud that want AI search, chat and agents grounded in that work, built and governed by Atlassian admins without a separate AI rollout
PaidAbout Glean
Glean started as enterprise search and has grown into a context platform for AI agents. Its foundation is a single-tenant index and knowledge graph built from connectors to the apps a company already runs (Glean's site cites more than 275), with each document's source permissions mirrored so people and agents only see what they're allowed to see. On top sit three surfaces. Search finds documents, people and answers. Glean Assistant is the chat front door, with reasoning modes, Deep Research, Canvas for documents, slides and spreadsheets, and data analysis that runs code in an isolated environment. Glean Agents is the agentic layer: builders describe an outcome in Auto mode and let the agent pick tools and delegate subtasks to sub-agents, or use Workflow mode for fixed steps, branches and loops. Agents start from a chat message, an input form, a schedule, or a content trigger such as a new Jira ticket, a Salesforce stage change, a Gong call or a new email, and they call read and write tools in connected apps, natively or through MCP servers. Independent agents, in beta, go further: they own a shared workflow with their own identity, admin-managed service credentials and a Slack presence instead of borrowing a user's session. Developers can also define agents as files from Claude Code, Codex or Cursor with the headless builder and publish them to Glean's managed runtime. Its Model Hub offers OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Amazon and open models plus Glean's own Waldo model, through Glean's Universal Model Key or the customer's own keys. Glean also works outward, exposing search, chat and agents to ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot Studio and Gemini Enterprise through an MCP server and the Agent2Agent protocol, and to custom apps through REST APIs and a Web SDK. Deployment is Glean Hosted (single-tenant SaaS) or Customer Hosted in the customer's own GCP or AWS account, still operated by Glean. The tradeoffs are cost visibility and weight: seat prices aren't published, model and agent usage is billed on top as Model Hub usage or FlexCredits, and the platform pays off only after connectors, permissions and governance are set up across the company.
Updates from Glean
Glean made service credentials for agents generally available, including service-credential MCP servers for Atlassian, Coda, Datadog, incident.io, Intercom, Linear and Zendesk, so agents can act through a shared service account instead of each user's authorization. Independent agents can now also generate images without a separate action.
Agents can now run when a new major version of a Glean artifact is published, agents can reach ServiceNow through a service credential, and independent agents can use user-authorized tools when an approver lends access through an approval request. Deep Research became a skill, and Auto mode in Glean Assistant now picks the model and reasoning level for each request under an admin-set Economy, Balanced or Frontier routing policy.
Agents that run autonomously now use an improved execution engine by default for multi-tool workflows. The release also let agent creators import and export agents, added 57 MCP server templates and added Gemini 4 Argon.
Glean became available on the Claude Marketplace, so Anthropic customers can apply part of their committed Anthropic spend to Glean. Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Claude Opus 5.5 are among the Claude models organizations can configure in Glean's Model Hub.
Glean introduced headless agent building: developers create agents as spec.yaml and instructions.md files from Claude Code, Cursor or Codex through the Glean plugin, test and evaluate them locally, review changes in Git, and publish them to Glean's managed runtime with the same knowledge graph, permissions and audit trail as agents built in the visual builder.
Glean launched Glean for Data Analysis, which connects warehouses such as Snowflake and Databricks, BI tools such as Power BI and Tableau, and apps such as Salesforce and Jira so employees can ask data questions in natural language, build interactive dashboards and turn one-off analysis into recurring agent reports.
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