Glean alternatives for small and mid-size teams (2026)
Glean is built and sold for large enterprises. Here are the alternatives for smaller teams, who each one fits, and verified pricing as of November 2026.
The KnowWhyy team · · 8 min read
Glean is one of the strongest AI search products you can buy. It's also built, priced and sold for large companies. If you run a 15-person engineering team or a 120-person startup, you probably can't see a price without booking a demo, and the contract you'd sign is sized for organizations several times larger than yours.
This guide covers what Glean does well, why smaller teams end up looking elsewhere, and the realistic alternatives as of November 2026, grouped by the kind of team each one suits. Every price links to the vendor's own page, checked on November 6, 2026.
What Glean does well
It's worth being clear about why Glean is the benchmark before looking at alternatives.
Breadth. Glean's homepage lists 275+ connectors to work apps and data sources, including Slack, Google Drive, Jira, Confluence, SharePoint, GitHub and Salesforce.
Permission-aware answers. Glean says users only see what they're allowed to see, which is the hardest part of company-wide search to get right.
Model choice. It supports 40+ LLMs, and its Core Suite documentation covers search, an assistant, agent building, APIs and MCP support on one platform.
Enterprise controls. The homepage lists SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, ISO 42001 and HIPAA, plus observability and data governance features.
If you have hundreds of employees, dozens of tools and a security team that needs those certifications, Glean is designed for you. We compare it with Atlassian's offering in Rovo vs Glean.
Ask your first question in minutes.
Create a workspace, connect a tool and choose what gets indexed. The free plan includes GitHub, Slack and Notion.
Four things come up, and all of them are about how Glean is sold rather than how well it works.
1. There's no public price. As of November 6, 2026, glean.com/pricing redirects to the Glean homepage, where the call to action is "Get a demo". You can't estimate cost without a sales conversation.
2. Two cost lines, not one. Glean's own pricing documentation says Core Suite is licensed per user per month. Features such as Deep Research, Canvas, reasoning modes and meeting notes run on "Model Hub Usage", which needs an upfront commit and is charged at model or hosting provider API rates. An optional Flexible Model Management fee is a percentage of total LLM usage. That's reasonable for an enterprise, but it means budgeting for seats and for usage.
3. Reported minimums. Glean doesn't publish a minimum contract. Buyer data from Vendr puts the median Glean purchase at $98,890 a year across 174 purchases, and says minimum commitments often start around 100 to 250 users. Treat those as reported figures, not Glean's terms, but they explain why a 30-person team rarely gets far.
4. Sales-led rollout. A demo, a scoping call and an enterprise rollout make sense for a company-wide platform. They're a lot of process when you want to connect three tools this week.
The alternatives at a glance
Tool
Best fit
What it connects
Price as of November 2026
Buy without a sales call?
KnowWhyy
Engineering and product teams on GitHub, Slack and Notion
GitHub, Slack, Notion
Free for 2 members; Team $15 per paid seat a month
Yes
Notion AI
Teams that already live in Notion
Notion, plus Slack, GitHub and more on Business
Business $20 per member a month
Yes
Slack AI
Teams whose decisions happen in Slack
Slack; other apps only on Enterprise+
Business+ $15 per user a month (annual)
Yes, up to Business+
Atlassian Rovo
Teams on Jira and Confluence Cloud
Atlassian apps, plus third-party connectors
Included with paid Atlassian Cloud plans, metered in credits
Yes, via an Atlassian plan
Unblocked
Engineering teams that also need Jira, Confluence and code
GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Slack, Teams, Notion, Jira, Confluence, Linear and more
$29 per user a month (annual)
Yes
Onyx
Teams that must self-host
40+ connectors
Free open-source edition; Cloud $20 per user a month (annual)
Yes
Guru
Companies whose problem is stale, unverified knowledge
100+ integrations
Custom package, sales call
No
Glean (reference)
Large enterprises
275+ connectors
Not published
No
Details and sources for each are below.
Already paying for the platform? Start there
The cheapest alternative is often the AI that comes with a tool you already pay for. The catch is that each one is strongest inside its own product.
Notion AI
Notion's Business plan, at $20 per member a month, includes Notion Agent, AI meeting notes and Enterprise Search (in beta), which searches connected apps "like Slack, Github & more". Free and Plus plans get only a trial of Notion AI. Per Notion's connector docs, answers cite their sources, connectors generally reach back one year from setup, and first ingestion can take up to 36 hours.
Fits: teams whose specs, notes and projects already live in Notion.
Watch for: you need a workspace owner to set up connectors, and history older than a year from setup isn't covered. See KnowWhyy vs Notion AI.
Slack AI
Slack no longer sells a separate AI add-on. AI search answers, recaps and Slackbot come with Business+, at $15 per user a month billed annually or $18 monthly. Searching other tools from Slack, such as GitHub, Jira or Confluence, is "enterprise search", which needs Enterprise+ and a sales conversation. Notion isn't on Slack's list of enterprise search sources. Our Slack AI pricing guide covers the plans and limits in detail.
Fits: teams whose decisions genuinely live in Slack and who'd pay for Business+ anyway.
Watch for: below Enterprise+, answers come from Slack only. See KnowWhyy vs Slack AI.
Atlassian Rovo
Rovo's licensing FAQ says it comes with Standard, Premium and Enterprise Cloud plans of Jira, Confluence and Jira Service Management, with no separate purchase. Jira and Confluence plans include 25, 70 or 150 Rovo credits per user a month, pooled across the organization, and extra usage is $0.01 per credit unless an admin turns it off. Rovo Search doesn't use credits.
Fits: teams that plan in Jira and document in Confluence.
If the expensive questions in your company come from engineers ("why does this service retry three times?", "what shipped last week?"), a tool built around code history usually beats a company-wide search box.
Unblocked
Unblocked costs $29 per user a month billed annually ($35 monthly), with a 21-day free trial. Its pricing page lists source control (GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Azure DevOps), CI systems, Confluence, Notion, Google Drive, Jira, Linear, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Datadog and Sentry, plus cited sources, an MCP server and AI code review. Enterprise, with SSO and on-premises options, is contact sales.
Fits: engineering teams that need Jira and Confluence covered today, plus IDE and coding-agent access.
Watch for: it's priced for engineers, so it's a large bill if the whole company needs seats.
KnowWhyy
Full disclosure: this is our product. More in the section at the end.
Self-hosted and open source
Onyx
Onyx (formerly Danswer) is the most established open-source option. Its Community Edition is MIT-licensed and covers RAG search, chat, agents and actions; an Enterprise Edition adds features for larger organizations. You can run it with Docker, Kubernetes or Helm, connect your own LLM provider (including self-hosted models), and ask questions from a web app, a Slack bot or an MCP server. If you'd rather not run it yourself, Onyx Cloud's Business plan is $20 per user a month on annual billing, with 40+ app connectors.
Fits: teams with data residency rules, or a platform team happy to own another service.
Watch for: self-hosting moves the cost from licenses to your own time: upgrades, index health, connector failures and model configuration. Our build vs buy guide lists what that involves.
Sales-led, like Glean
Guru
Guru is known for verification: experts re-confirm content on a schedule, and answers carry citations and permissions from your existing systems. It lists 100+ integrations, including Slack, Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, Zendesk, Confluence and SharePoint, and delivers its knowledge to other AI tools over MCP. Pricing is no longer self-serve. Guru describes itself as a platform plus a team of solution engineers, scoped in a first call.
Fits: companies whose real problem is stale or contradictory documentation.
Watch for: like Glean, you can't see a price before talking to sales.
A note on Dashworks
Dashworks used to be the budget pick in lists like this. HubSpot announced it would acquire Dashworks in April 2025, and the Dashworks team joined HubSpot's AI product group. The Dashworks pricing page still shows a Team plan at $10 per seat a month billed yearly with no seat minimum. Given the acquisition, confirm it's taking new customers and check its roadmap before you plan around it.
Run a two-week trial, not a feature comparison
Feature grids look similar. Answers to your own questions don't. Pick two or three tools from the list above and run the same test on each:
## AI search trial: <tool name>
Setup
- Sources connected: <repos, channels, spaces>
- Time from signup to first answer: <minutes/hours/days>
- Needed a sales call or admin from another team? <yes/no>
Ten real questions (pulled from Slack in the last 3 months)
| # | Question | Correct? | Cited the right source? | Said "I don't know" when it should? |
|---|----------|----------|-------------------------|-------------------------------------|
| 1 | Why did we move payments retries to a queue? | | | |
| 2 | What shipped in the API last week? | | | |
| ... | | | | |
Permission check
- Asked as a user without access to #private-channel: <leaked? yes/no>
Cost for our team size, as quoted: <$ per month>
Score the answers against what a senior person on the team would say. That test is hard to game, and it shows quickly which tool understands where your team's knowledge lives.
How to choose
Large company, many tools, procurement team ready -> Glean
Jira + Confluence Cloud is your system of record -> Atlassian Rovo
Notion is your hub and you're on Business -> Notion AI
Decisions live in Slack and you pay for Business+ -> Slack AI
Engineers need Jira, Confluence, code and IDE access -> Unblocked
Data must stay on your own infrastructure -> Onyx (self-hosted)
Stale, unverified docs are the core problem -> Guru
GitHub + Slack + Notion team, want to start free -> KnowWhyy
Where KnowWhyy fits
KnowWhyy is an AI knowledge base for teams whose history lives in GitHub, Slack and Notion. You choose which repositories, channels and pages get indexed, ask in the KnowWhyy web app, and every claim links to the commit, pull request, issue, Slack thread or Notion page it came from. If the sources don't contain the answer, it says so. Integrations are read-only, Slack DMs are never read, and source code itself isn't indexed. It doesn't cover company-wide HR or sales content, and Jira, Linear, Confluence and Google Drive are planned rather than available. Pricing is public: a free plan for up to 2 members with 300 questions a month, then $15 per paid seat a month on Team. See KnowWhyy vs Glean or start free.
The short version
Glean is strong on breadth, permissions and enterprise controls, but it publishes no price and sells through a demo-led process.
Glean's docs show seat licensing plus usage-based model costs; buyer data from Vendr reports a $98,890 median contract and minimums often around 100 to 250 users.
If you already pay for Notion Business, Slack Business+ or a paid Atlassian Cloud plan, try the AI you already own first, and check what it can't see.
Unblocked (from $29 per user a month) and KnowWhyy (free to start) are self-serve options focused on engineering knowledge; Onyx is the open-source, self-hosted route.
Guru is sales-led like Glean, and Dashworks is now part of HubSpot, so confirm its status first.
Test each shortlisted tool on ten real questions from your own Slack before you decide.