# Cohere North vs Dust

> Dust scores 62.8 (B) on agent readiness against Cohere North's 55.1 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Cohere North leads on schema & documentation. Both do company knowledge search. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cohere-north-vs-dust
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cohere-north-vs-dust.md (~2,100 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cohere-north-vs-dust.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cohere-north-vs-dust.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

Dust scores 62.8 (B) on agent readiness against Cohere North's 55.1 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Cohere North leads on schema & documentation. Both do company knowledge search.

- Cohere North: grade C, 55.1/100, rank #598 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cohere-north.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cohere-north.json
- Dust: grade B, 62.8/100, rank #378 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/dust.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/dust.json

## Which one, for what

### Cohere North (C)

Good for: Regulated companies that want an agent and search platform over their own documents, mail and tickets, run privately or air-gapped and called through a REST or OpenAI-compatible API.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 85 against 75

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

### Dust (B)

Good for: A team that already works in Dust and wants an outside agent to search its spaces, read documents and call its agents with a user's own access.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 53 against 37
- Payments & pricing, 20 against 0
- Maintenance & community, 86 against 78

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Open source
- No incidents deducted, where Cohere North loses 4 points for them

Watch for: Programmatic usage has no free credits. It draws only on the workspace credit pool, which Free seats cannot use


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Cohere North | Dust | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 37 | 53 | Dust +16 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 85 | 75 | Cohere North +10 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 71 | 67 | Cohere North +4 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 77 | 75 | Cohere North +2 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 0 | 20 | Dust +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 78 | 86 | Dust +8 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 69 | 68 | Cohere North +1 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -4 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **55.1 · C** | **62.8 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Cohere North | Dust |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Cohere Inc. | Permutation Labs |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://dust.tt/mcp` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Paid | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary platform under Cohere's terms of use and customer agreements. The North MCP Python SDK on GitHub is MIT | MIT for the platform's source at github.com/dust-tt/dust. The hosted service is sold under Dust's own terms. The npm page gives ISC for `@dust-tt/client` and MIT for `@dust-tt/dust-cli` |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-10-08 |
| Terms last updated | 2022-09-07 | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-05-01 | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | yes |  |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text |  |
| Popularity | none | 1.5k stars, 17k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (2) | none |

## Verdicts

**Cohere North.** North has a public OpenAPI 3.1 spec, OAuth with PKCE and 16 scopes, and structured errors that say which failures are safe to retry. Access is the main limitation. Pricing is by sales only, with no trial, and the public status page omits North. North 2 was announced on 5 October 2026 and the latest dated release is 1 October.

**Dust.** The whole platform is MIT on GitHub, with a public OpenAPI document of 68 operations, llms.txt and a remote MCP server that acts with the signed-in user's access. API calls that run agents draw only on a paid workspace credit pool, and the terms of service could not be read.

## Before you call either

### Cohere North

1. Get the North host from your admin and call https://<host>/api. Cohere-hosted examples use north.cohere.com
2. Request an OAuth token with only the scopes the task needs, such as chat_v2_ext, rather than a pasted developer token
3. Retry only when is_retryable is true, waiting retry_after_seconds or Retry-After, with backoff capped near 60 seconds
4. Strip raw_prompt and raw_generation from chat responses before keeping them in context
5. Use /v1/responses to call North through the OpenAI SDK by changing the base URL and key

### Dust

1. Use `https://eu.dust.tt` for a workspace in the EU region and `https://dust.tt` otherwise, for both the API and the MCP server
2. Connect an MCP client by OAuth and send the `resource` parameter in authorisation and token requests. API keys do not work on the MCP server
3. Expect HTTP 429 with type `rate_limit_error` when the credit pool, the programmatic monthly cap or the key's spend cap is exhausted. Retrying will not help
4. Call `GET /api/v1/w/{wId}/search` with `limit` (1 to 100, default 25) and `cursor`, or a data source view's search with `top_k`
5. Keep document upserts under 120 a minute per workspace

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Cohere North or Dust?

Dust scores 62.8 (B) on agent readiness against Cohere North's 55.1 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Cohere North leads on schema & documentation.

### Do Cohere North and Dust need an API key?

Cohere North uses an OAuth sign-in. Dust takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call Cohere North and Dust without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Cohere North. Dust has a hosted endpoint at https://dust.tt/mcp.

### Are Cohere North and Dust open source?

No open-source release is listed for Cohere North. Dust is open source (MIT for the platform's source at github.com/dust-tt/dust. The hosted service is sold under Dust's own terms. The npm page gives ISC for `@dust-tt/client` and MIT for `@dust-tt/dust-cli`).


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Cohere North or Dust

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