# Cohere North vs Glean

> Glean scores 69.8 (B) on agent readiness against Cohere North's 55.4 (C), and leads in 6 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/cohere-north-vs-glean
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cohere-north-vs-glean.md (~1,800 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cohere-north-vs-glean.min.md (~630 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cohere-north-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: 2026-10-06

Glean scores 69.8 (B) on agent readiness against Cohere North's 55.4 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do company knowledge search.

- Cohere North: grade C, 55.4/100, rank #320 of 460. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cohere-north.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cohere-north.json
- Glean: grade B, 69.8/100, rank #105 of 460. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/glean.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/glean.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.

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

### 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:
- Reliability, 60 against 37
- Schema & documentation, 93 against 85
- Agent ergonomics, 80 against 71
- Security & auth, 87 against 77
- Maintenance & community, 85 against 78
- Transparency & trust, 80 against 73

Also in its favour:
- Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.5 against 2.5 out of 5
- No incidents deducted, where Cohere North loses 4 points for them

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


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Cohere North | Glean | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 37 | 60 | Glean +23 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 85 | 93 | Glean +8 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 71 | 80 | Glean +9 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 77 | 87 | Glean +10 |
| 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) | 78 | 85 | Glean +7 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 73 | 80 | Glean +7 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -4 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **55.4 · C** | **69.8 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Cohere North | Glean |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Cohere Inc. | Glean Technologies, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Paid | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary platform under Cohere's terms of use and customer agreements. The North MCP Python SDK on GitHub is MIT | Proprietary service under Glean's terms of service. The OpenAPI specs repository, the API clients and the Glean CLI on GitHub are MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-10-02 |
| Popularity | none | 58k npm/wk, 26k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (2) | 3.5/5 (2) |

## 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.

**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

### 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

### 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, Cohere North or Glean?

Glean scores 69.8 (B) on agent readiness against Cohere North's 55.4 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

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

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

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

No hosted endpoint is listed for Cohere North. No hosted endpoint is listed for Glean.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Cohere North or Glean

- [Atlan vs Cohere North](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atlan-vs-cohere-north.md)
- [Atlan vs Glean](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atlan-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)
- [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)