# Alation vs Glean

> Glean scores 69.8 (B) on agent readiness against Alation's 60.3 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do company knowledge search. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-glean
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-glean.md (~2,050 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-glean.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-glean.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-09

Glean scores 69.8 (B) on agent readiness against Alation's 60.3 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do company knowledge search.

- Alation: grade C, 60.3/100, rank #472 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/alation.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/alation.json
- Glean: grade B, 69.8/100, rank #159 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/glean.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/glean.json

## Which one, for what

### Alation (C)

Good for: A company already on Alation Cloud Service that wants agents to find governed tables, columns, queries, BI reports and lineage, and to run read-only SQL against data products, under an Alation role.

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine

Watch for: No published price, trial or self-serve sign-up. The pricing address redirects to a sales form

### Glean (B)

Good for: Agents working inside a company that already runs Glean and need answers from its documents, chats, tickets, code and people with each user's permissions applied.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 93 against 78
- Agent ergonomics, 80 against 71
- Security & auth, 87 against 63
- Maintenance & community, 85 against 71

Watch for: No public price, trial or self-serve signup. Access starts with a demo request


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Alation | Glean | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 61 | 60 | Alation +1 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 78 | 93 | Glean +15 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 71 | 80 | Glean +9 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 63 | 87 | Glean +24 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 0 | 0 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 71 | 85 | Glean +14 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 76 | 80 | Glean +4 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **60.3 · C** | **69.8 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Alation | Glean |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Alation, Inc. | Glean Technologies, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Paid | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Alation's Master Cloud Software Licence and Services Agreement. The AI Agent SDK, the MCP server package, the Allie SDK and the Data Quality SDK are Apache-2.0 | Proprietary service under Glean's terms of service. The OpenAPI specs repository, the API clients and the Glean CLI on GitHub are MIT |
| Tools exposed | 16 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-03 | 2026-10-02 |
| Terms last updated | no date given |  |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2026-04-01 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text |  |
| Popularity | 19 stars, 2.1k PyPI/wk | 58k npm/wk, 26k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.5/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Alation.** Each API has an OpenAPI 3.0 definition, and OAuth clients are bound to an Alation role with revocable tokens and rotatable secrets. Access needs a sales contract, since no price, trial or self-serve sign-up is published. The agent SDK and local MCP server have stayed at a release candidate since 14 January 2026.

**Glean.** Three public OpenAPI specs (Client, Indexing, Platform) regenerated almost daily, plus llms.txt and Markdown docs. No public price, trial or self-serve signup. Access starts with a demo request.

## Before you call either

### Alation

1. Ask a Server Admin to register an OAuth client application with the lowest role that fits. Only admins can create one, and the secret is shown once
2. Pin `alation-ai-agent-mcp==1.0.0rc3`. An unpinned install resolves to 0.12.0, which predates the catalogue search agent
3. Call `catalog_context_search_agent` for catalogue questions. `alation_context` is deprecated and its description tells models not to call it directly
4. Watch `X-Entitlement-Usage` on Aggregated Context API responses. The 2,000 free calls never reset, and a quota 429 is not retryable
5. Page with `limit` and `skip` and follow `X-Next-Page`. The BI Source API uses `offset`, and one call returns at most 1,000 objects

### Glean

1. Get the backend host from the Glean admin. APIs answer at https://<instance>-be.glean.com and MCP at that host under /mcp/<server-name>
2. Ask for a user-scoped token with only the scopes the task needs. A global token can impersonate whoever `X-Glean-ActAs` names
3. Keep chat under 0.5 calls a second and search under 5, and back off on 429
4. Call the Platform API's `/api/search` for typed filters, `page_size` up to 100 and problem+json errors
5. Send `X-Glean-Exclude-Deprecated-After` in tests to catch fields due for removal

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Alation or Glean?

Glean scores 69.8 (B) on agent readiness against Alation's 60.3 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories.

### Do Alation and Glean need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call Alation and Glean without installing anything?

Alation runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. No hosted endpoint is listed for Glean.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-glean.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-glean.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "alation", "b": "glean"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare alation glean`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/alation.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/glean.json

## Other comparisons with Alation or Glean

- [Alation vs Cohere North](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-cohere-north.md)
- [Alation vs Dust](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-dust.md)
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- [Atlan vs Glean](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atlan-vs-glean.md)
- [Cohere North vs Glean](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cohere-north-vs-glean.md)
- [Dust vs Glean](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/dust-vs-glean.md)
- [Glean vs Guru](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/glean-vs-guru.md)
- [Glean vs Onyx](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/glean-vs-onyx.md)
- [Glean vs Overclock](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/glean-vs-overclock.md)
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