Last updated: 2026-06-01
Glean is the enterprise AI search platform that reached $300M ARR in 2026. Connects 100+ apps with permissions-aware results and full MCP server support.
Glean is an enterprise AI search platform founded in 2019, reaching $300M ARR in 2026 and valued at $7.2B. It connects 100+ business apps including Slack, Google Workspace, and Jira with permissions-aware search and an AI assistant. Pricing starts at approximately $50 per user per month with a minimum contract of $60,000 per year. SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, GDPR, and ISO 27001 certified.
Glean is an enterprise AI search and knowledge platform founded in 2019 by Arvind Jain, a former Google Search engineering lead who also co-founded Rubrik. The platform crossed $300 million in annual recurring revenue in May 2026, tripling its topline in just 15 months, and serves nearly double its Fortune 500 customer count year over year, with 85% of customers using it across five or more departments. Its core promise is to connect all of a company's applications and let employees find anything using natural language, without needing to know where the information lives. The engine behind Glean is a proprietary Context Graph that maps relationships between people, documents, conversations, and activity across 100+ connected applications. Unlike keyword-based tools that rank by recency or popularity, Glean understands organizational context, surfacing results personalized to each user's team, role, and typical collaborations. A developer asking about the status of an authentication refactor gets answers pulled from Jira tickets, Slack threads, and GitHub pull requests, all permission-trimmed to what that person is allowed to see. Real-time indexing means results reflect the current state of connected apps, not a stale snapshot. The platform has expanded well beyond pure search. Glean Assistant answers questions by synthesizing from multiple sources with citations. Glean Agents automate repetitive workflows across those same data connections. Glean Protect continuously scans for overshared sensitive data across all connected apps and applies governance policies automatically. A built-in MCP Remote Server lets developers connect Glean directly into Claude Desktop, Cursor, and VS Code, reducing context switching for engineering teams who query internal knowledge alongside external tooling. Pricing is enterprise-only and custom-quoted with no public rate card. Based on publicly available buyer data, base licensing runs approximately $50 per user per month with a minimum annual contract around $60,000 for 100 or more seats. The Work AI add-on for generative capabilities costs an additional $15 per user per month. POC engagements can cost up to $70,000, and standard contracts include 7 to 12 percent annual renewal escalation. The platform runs on web, iOS, and Android with browser extensions for Chrome and Edge. Deployment is managed SaaS, meaning Glean operates the software even in a customer's VPC. In June 2025, Glean raised $150 million in a Series F at a $7.2 billion valuation, bringing total funding to $765 million from investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, and DST Global. The company is certified SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, GDPR, ISO 27001, and ISO 42001:2023, with zero-retention agreements with all LLM providers ensuring customer data is never used for model training. The LLM abstraction layer supports multiple underlying models including ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, configurable by enterprise IT.
No free tier. No public pricing. Enterprise-only: base ~$50/user/month (min 100 seats, ~$60K/year ACV). Work AI add-on: ~$15/user/month. POC fee: up to $70,000. Annual renewals escalate 7-12% by default.
Glean is an enterprise AI search and knowledge platform founded in 2019 by Arvind Jain, a former Google Search engineering lead who also co-founded Rubrik. It crossed $300 million in annual recurring revenue in May 2026, serving nearly double its Fortune 500 customer count year over year. The platform connects 100+ enterprise applications including Slack, Google Workspace, Jira, and Salesforce, and builds a permissions-aware knowledge graph that lets employees search across all connected data using natural language. Glean includes Glean Search for cross-app discovery, Glean Assistant for AI-powered Q&A with citations, Glean Agents for workflow automation, and Glean Protect for data governance.
Glean does not publish a public pricing page; all contracts are custom-quoted through a direct sales process. Based on buyer-reported data, base enterprise licensing runs approximately $50 per user per month with a minimum annual contract around $60,000 for 100 or more seats. The Work AI add-on for generative capabilities costs an additional $15 per user per month on top of the base license. Proof-of-concept engagements can cost up to $70,000, and standard contracts typically include 7 to 12 percent annual renewal escalation. There is no free tier or self-serve trial available.
Glean's core engine is a proprietary Context Graph that maps relationships between people, documents, and activity across 100+ connected apps, surfacing personalized and permissions-aware search results in real time. Glean Assistant synthesizes multi-source answers with citations, allowing employees to ask natural language questions and get structured answers drawn from Slack, Confluence, and Jira simultaneously. Glean Agents automate repetitive workflows using those same data connections, while Glean Protect continuously scans for overshared sensitive data and applies governance policies across all integrations. The platform also ships a native MCP Remote Server that enables AI assistants like Claude Desktop and Cursor to query Glean directly via OAuth 2.1.
Glean has no free tier, free trial, or self-serve signup. The platform targets enterprises with 100 or more seats and requires a sales-led engagement to obtain pricing and begin a proof of concept. POC engagements themselves are paid, typically requiring a minimum of 200 seats and costing up to $70,000. Teams below 100 employees or with limited budgets should consider alternatives like Guru, which offers usage-based pricing, or GoSearch, which has lower minimum seat requirements and more flexible plans.
Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 is the strongest alternative for organizations already running on Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive, costing $30 per user per month versus Glean's ~$50. Guru offers governed knowledge management with verified-answer tracking and usage-based pricing, making it better for mid-market teams needing a curated knowledge base rather than universal search. GoSearch combines federated search with agentic workflows and supports flexible LLM configuration, positioning it as a lower-cost option with broader automation coverage. Coveo is preferable when enterprise search needs to span both employee-facing and customer-facing digital surfaces under one unified platform.
Glean is best for IT directors, CIOs, and knowledge management leads at enterprises with 500 or more employees running fragmented SaaS toolstacks with data spread across Slack, Jira, Confluence, Google Drive, and Salesforce. It delivers the most value when permissions enforcement across all those systems is a hard security requirement, such as in financial services, healthcare, and technology companies. Engineering teams benefit strongly from the cross-system code and ticket search, while HR and operations teams use it for onboarding knowledge delivery. Glean is not suitable for startups, SMBs under 100 employees, or teams that need RPA-style workflow execution rather than knowledge retrieval.
Glean offers a full Client API and a native MCP Remote Server documented at developers.glean.com. The MCP server exposes search and chat tools to any MCP-compatible AI assistant including Claude Desktop, Cursor, and VS Code, authenticated via OAuth 2.1. Developers can also use the REST API to programmatically query the knowledge graph, retrieve documents, and trigger agents. Custom connectors and webhook integrations allow teams to index data from internal systems not covered by the 100+ out-of-the-box app connectors.
Glean costs approximately $50 per user per month versus Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 at $30 per user per month, but Glean covers 100+ applications versus Copilot's focus on the Microsoft 365 suite including Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Outlook. For organizations running primarily on Microsoft tools, Copilot is cheaper and requires no new infrastructure. Glean is the better choice for hybrid toolstacks that combine Slack, Salesforce, Jira, GitHub, and Google Workspace alongside Microsoft tools, where a unified permissions-aware search layer across all systems justifies the premium. Glean's knowledge graph personalization and native MCP server give it an edge for engineering-heavy organizations; Copilot wins on Microsoft stack depth and price.