Head-to-head comparison
GleanvsDust
Glean and Dust both sell "AI that actually knows our company data" to the same enterprise IT buyer, but they start from opposite ends. Glean indexes everything your company already uses and lets employees search across it; Dust hands technical teams a platform to build custom agents wired into specific internal tools.
At a glance
| Glean | Dust | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Productivity | Productivity |
| Function | Enterprise search | Enterprise AI agents |
| Pricing | Paid | Paid |
| Starting price | Enterprise — typically $40-$50 per user/mo | Custom enterprise pricing, no public self-serve tier |
| Editor rating | — | 4.3 / 5 |
| Released | February 2021 | July 2026 |
Glean
Pros
- Best-in-class for "where is that document"
- Permissions actually respected
- Adoption inside companies tends to be high
Cons
- Enterprise pricing — not for individuals
- Implementation takes weeks
Dust
Pros
- Agents actually reflect a company's real data instead of generic answers
- Built with enterprise security and access control in mind from the start
- Flexible enough to cover many different internal use cases
Cons
- Requires real technical setup work before anyone sees value
- Pricing is opaque and clearly not aimed at small teams
- Success depends heavily on how clean the underlying company data is
Which one should you pick?
Pick Glean if
Your core problem is "where is that document" — you want permissions-aware search across Slack, Drive, GitHub, Jira, and everything else, out of the box.
See Glean details →Pick Dust if
You want to build several narrow, purpose-built agents tied to specific internal workflows, and you have a technical team ready to configure them.
See Dust details →Bottom line
Glean for company-wide search that just works once it's connected. Dust for platform teams who want to build custom agents rather than rely on generic search. Both need real enterprise budget and weeks of setup — neither is a self-serve individual tool.