Atlassian Rovo vs Glean (2026): pricing, connectors and which fits your team
Rovo and Glean both answer questions across your company's tools with citations. How they compare on pricing (including Rovo's new credits from December 3, 2026), connectors, GitHub support and team size.
The KnowWhyy team · · 5 min read
Atlassian Rovo and Glean promise the same thing: ask a question in plain English and get an answer drawn from your company's own tools, with links back to the sources. Under that shared promise they're built for quite different buyers, and the details (who can buy it, what it costs per question, how GitHub gets connected) decide which one fits.
This comparison is current as of November 2026, including Rovo's switch to metered AI credits on December 3, 2026. Vendor pricing changes often, so the sources are linked for you to re-check.
Rovo vs Glean at a glance
Atlassian Rovo
Glean
What it is
AI search, chat and agents built into Atlassian Cloud
Standalone enterprise "Work AI" search and assistant
How you buy it
Included with paid Jira, Confluence or Jira Service Management Cloud plans; not sold on its own
Large organizations with many tools and a procurement process
Atlassian Rovo: built into Jira and Confluence
Rovo is Atlassian's AI layer: Rovo Search, Rovo Chat, agents and deep research, running on the "Teamwork Graph" that links your Jira work items, Confluence pages and connected apps.
You can't buy Rovo on its own. According to Atlassian's licensing page, Rovo is added automatically to organizations on Standard, Premium or Enterprise Cloud plans of Jira, Confluence or Jira Service Management, and "no separate Rovo purchase is required". That's great news if you already pay for Atlassian Cloud. If your team runs on GitHub, Slack and Notion without Jira, there's no way to get Rovo without adopting an Atlassian product.
From December 3, 2026, heavier AI use is metered. Atlassian's September 2026 announcement introduced credits for "deep AI interactions", including Rovo Chat. Each paid user brings a monthly allowance (25 credits on Jira or Confluence Standard, 70 on Premium, 150 on Enterprise), pooled across the organization. A quick Rovo Chat message costs 10 credits, and usage beyond the allowance is billed at $0.01 per credit. Rovo Search stays free. We break down what that means in practice in Rovo credits explained.
Connecting GitHub takes some setup. Rovo's GitHub connector indexes repositories, pull requests, issues, commits and comments, but it works with GitHub Cloud only (not GitHub Enterprise Server), requires the GitHub for Atlassian app installed on your Jira site, and needs approval from a GitHub organization owner. Atlassian notes the initial sync can take anywhere from minutes to a couple of weeks, and each user connects their own account to external apps.
Where Rovo shines: if your planning lives in Jira and your docs in Confluence, Rovo understands that data natively, respects Atlassian permissions, and costs nothing extra to switch on. For a Jira-centric team, it's the obvious first thing to try.
Glean: enterprise search across everything
Glean is a standalone platform that connects to a very long list of tools and enforces each source system's permissions. Its strengths are breadth and maturity: 275+ connectors covering GitHub (including Enterprise and on-prem), Slack, Notion, Jira, Confluence and most other SaaS a large company runs.
Citations are a strong point. Glean shows inline citation markers plus a "View sources" panel, and can deep-link to the passage an answer came from. One caveat from Glean's own docs: answers produced from the model's general knowledge, with no company sources, carry no citations.
Pricing isn't public. Glean's pricing page offers a demo rather than a price list. Third-party procurement data, as reported in a competitor's August 2026 roundup, puts the median annual contract near $99,000, with minimum seat counts often starting around 100 users. Treat those figures as indicative rather than official, but the takeaway is clear: Glean is sold to enterprises, and small teams can't self-serve it.
Where Glean shines: a company of several hundred people or more, dozens of tools, a security team that wants one permission-aware search layer, and a budget for an enterprise contract.
Which should you choose?
You already pay for Jira or Confluence Cloud (Standard or above): start with Rovo. It's included, it knows your Atlassian data natively, and Rovo Search is free. Watch Chat usage once credits start on December 3.
You're a large organization with many tools and no single "home" system: Glean's breadth and permissions model are built for you, if the contract size fits.
You're a small or mid-size engineering team on GitHub, Slack and Notion, without Jira: neither is a natural fit. Rovo requires buying into Atlassian Cloud, and Glean's contracts are sized for enterprises. See our roundup of Rovo alternatives for teams not on Jira.
Where KnowWhyy fits
KnowWhyy is built for that third group. It connects GitHub, Slack and Notion and answers questions like "why did we move sessions off Redis?" with a citation for every claim, pointing to the exact commit, pull request, thread or page. When your sources don't contain an answer, it says so instead of guessing. Integrations are read-only, you choose exactly which repositories, channels and pages are indexed, and Slack direct messages are never read.
It's self-serve: there's a free plan for up to 2 people, and the Team plan is a flat per-member price with no credits to track (see pricing). To be clear about the gap: KnowWhyy doesn't index Jira or Confluence yet. Both are on the roadmap, and if your knowledge lives mostly there today, Rovo is the better choice.
The short version
Rovo and Glean both answer questions across company tools with source links.
Rovo comes with paid Atlassian Cloud plans and can't be bought alone; from December 3, 2026, Rovo Chat uses metered credits while Rovo Search stays free.
Rovo's GitHub connector needs GitHub Cloud, Jira and the GitHub for Atlassian app.
Glean has the broadest connector list and strong citations, but pricing is quote-only and sized for enterprises.
Small engineering teams on GitHub, Slack and Notion without Jira are underserved by both; that's where tools like KnowWhyy come in.