Last updated: 2026-09-03
Glean, founded in 2019, indexes a company's work applications - Google Drive, Jira, Confluence, SharePoint, GitHub and Salesforce among those it names - and answers questions and runs agents over that content. Its defining constraint is permissions: source-system permissions are enforced on every read and write, so an agent does not automatically get everything a user can reach. Glean Protect adds governance over AI interactions. It is model-agnostic rather than shipping its own LLM, holds SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, ISO 42001, HIPAA, TX-RAMP Level 2 and GDPR, and is sold enterprise-only: no free tier, no self-serve signup, and no published price.
About Glean
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. Its core promise is to connect every application a company uses so employees can find anything in plain language, without needing to know which system holds it. The engine behind Glean is a proprietary Context Graph that maps relationships between people, documents, conversations, and activity across every connected application. 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 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 fully custom-quoted; Glean does not publish a public rate card. 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 inside a customer's own 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 holds top-tier enterprise compliance certifications and maintains zero-retention agreements with every LLM provider, so customer data is never used to train outside models. Its LLM abstraction layer lets enterprise IT choose the underlying model, including ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude.
Screenshots
Pricing
Glean publishes no pricing. There is no free tier, no self-serve signup and no rate card: the pricing page is a demo request, and every deployment is a negotiated enterprise contract. Buyers report per-user figures in the tens of dollars a month with a base platform fee, minimum annual contracts around the mid five figures, paid proof-of-concept engagements, and renewal uplifts - but none of that comes from the vendor, so treat it as hearsay and get your own quote. Budget for the connector and rollout work as well as the licence. Vendor pages re-checked 3 September 2026.
Feature Comparison by Tier
| Feature | Enterprise |
|---|---|
| Price | Custom, quote only |
| Free tier or self-serve signup | — |
| Search across work apps | ✓ |
| Named connectors | Google Drive, Jira, Confluence, SharePoint, GitHub, Salesforce and more |
| Permissions enforced on every read and write | ✓ |
| AI agents over company content | ✓ |
| Glean Protect governance | ✓ |
| Model choice | Model-agnostic, set per contract |
| Host in your own cloud tenant | Available |
| Certifications | SOC 2 II · ISO 27001 · ISO 42001 · HIPAA · TX-RAMP L2 · GDPR |
| Published retention window | Not published - contract it |
Key Features
- Context Graph Search: Builds a knowledge graph across every connected application and returns permissions-aware, personalized search results in real time based on each user's role and team context.
- Glean Assistant: Synthesizes multi-source answers with inline citations, letting employees ask questions like 'What was decided in last week's sprint review?' and get structured answers from Slack, Confluence, and Jira simultaneously.
- Glean Agents: Automates repetitive back-office workflows by executing multi-step tasks across connected apps, reducing manual data-collection work for operations and HR teams.
- MCP Remote Server: Ships a native Model Context Protocol server at developers.glean.com that connects Claude Desktop, Cursor, and VS Code directly to Glean's search and chat API via OAuth 2.1.
- Glean Protect: Continuously scans all connected apps for overshared sensitive data and enforces permission policies, reducing the risk of employees accessing content outside their authorized scope.
- 100+ Pre-built Connectors: Integrates out of the box with Slack, Google Workspace, Jira, Confluence, GitHub, Salesforce, Zendesk, and ServiceNow, with custom connector APIs for unsupported systems.
Pros
- Ships with far more prebuilt connectors than comparable enterprise search tools like Coveo or GoSearch, roughly 3-5x by public connector-count comparisons, cutting custom integration work for IT teams.
- Nearly doubled its Fortune 500 customer count year over year, with 85% of customers now using Glean across five or more departments, a sign of deep production adoption rather than a single-team pilot.
- Certified SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, GDPR, ISO 27001, and ISO 42001:2023, with zero-retention agreements across every connected LLM provider, meeting the strictest enterprise security bars.
Cons
- No free tier and no self-serve trial; every deployment starts with a paid proof-of-concept engagement and a custom enterprise contract before a single seat goes live.
- Closed-source managed SaaS with no self-hosting option; Glean deploys and operates the software even in a customer's VPC, limiting code auditability.
- Search-first platform that surfaces information but does not execute complex multi-step workflows end-to-end, limiting utility for operations teams needing RPA-style automation.
Data Handling
- Training-data policy
- The security page's own commitment is about permissions rather than training: it says source-system permissions are enforced on every read and write, and that an agent should not automatically get everything the user can. Certifications shown on that page are SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, ISO 42001, HIPAA, TX-RAMP Level 2 and GDPR - ISO 42001 being the AI management standard, which is rare. The vendor's public security page does not itself state a retention window or a model-training exclusion, and Glean is model-agnostic, so what happens at the model layer depends on which provider your contract points at. Get both the retention and the training terms written into the agreement. Checked 3 September 2026.
- Data residency
- Deployment-dependent. Glean markets hosting inside a customer's own cloud tenant, and its published customer stories cite that as the reason for choosing it; specific regions are scoped in the contract rather than published.
- Compliance
- SOC 2 Type II · ISO 27001 · ISO 42001 · HIPAA · TX-RAMP Level 2 · GDPR
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Glean cost?
Glean does not say. The pricing page is a demo request: no plans, no per-user figure, no seat minimum, and no free tier or self-serve signup. Buyers report per-user pricing in the tens of dollars a month on top of a platform fee, minimum annual contracts in the mid five figures, and paid proof-of-concept engagements - but those numbers come from customers, not the vendor, and vary widely by seat count and connector scope. Assume the rollout work costs real money alongside the licence.
Does Glean let people see documents they should not?
That is the specific problem it is built around, and its security page states the commitment plainly: source-system permissions are enforced on every read and write, and an agent should not automatically get everything the user can. In practice that means a search or an agent answer is constructed only from what the asker already has access to in the source system, so the index does not become a way around SharePoint or Drive permissions. It is the reason enterprise search projects usually fail, and the reason this category exists.
What certifications does Glean hold?
Its security page shows SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, ISO 42001, HIPAA, TX-RAMP Level 2 and GDPR compliance. ISO 42001 is worth singling out: it is the AI management-system standard, and few vendors in this category hold it. What the page does not publish is a retention window or a model-training exclusion - and because Glean is model-agnostic, the model-layer terms follow whichever provider your contract points at. Put both in writing.
Who is Glean actually for?
Companies large enough that knowledge is genuinely lost across tools, and structured enough to have permissions worth enforcing. If your content lives in three apps and twenty people, the connector and rollout work will cost more than the problem. If it lives in fifty apps across thousands of people with real access boundaries, that is the case Glean is built for - and the one where the enterprise-only sales model stops being an obstacle.
What are the alternatives to Glean?
Microsoft Copilot is the default if the company is already mostly Microsoft: it arrives inside a subscription you may already hold, though its reach outside the Microsoft estate is weaker. ChatGPT Enterprise with connectors covers the assistant use case without the permissions-aware index. Open-source retrieval built on your own vector store is the option if you have the engineering to run it and want control of the model layer, which is exactly the part Glean deliberately leaves configurable.
Top Alternatives
- Microsoft Copilot: An 80%-Microsoft shop should look at Copilot first, since it arrives inside a subscription they already pay for. Glean earns its price when the stack sprawls across Slack, Jira, and Google Workspace.
- Notion: Notion works when the knowledge already lives in one structured wiki. Glean is for the case where it does not, and permissions have to be respected across every app.
- ChatGPT: ChatGPT reasons over the open world. Glean grounds answers in internal data and enforces who is allowed to see what.
- Perplexity AI: Perplexity AI is the research tool for what sits outside the company. Glean is the one for what sits inside it.
HokAI guides covering Glean
- Best AI Search Tools in 2026: Match the Tool to the Job: Perplexity, Bing, and Glean all get called AI search tools, but only Glean searches a company's internal Slack. Here is how the category splits by job in 2026.
- Jigso vs Modern: Which Should You Use in 2026?: Jigso pushes proactive Slack alerts for $18.99 a seat. Modern replaces the IT ticket queue via enterprise-only sales. See which job fits your team in 2026.
- Algolia and You.com Both Call Themselves AI Search Infrastructure. They Aren't Rivals.: Algolia and You.com both market themselves as AI search infrastructure in 2026, but Algolia indexes data you own while You.com searches the live web for agents.
- Oracle Added Claude Code to Fusion. Its Analyst Ranking Didn't Move.: Oracle's July 2026 update lets developers build Fusion agents with Claude Code, but Futurum's June report still ranks Oracle in its lowest platform tier.