Head to head · Company knowledge search · October 2026 research run
Cohere North vs Guru
Cohere North scores 55.4 (C) on agent readiness against Guru's 45.3 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Guru leads on reliability. Both do company knowledge search.
Which one, for what
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 58
- Agent ergonomics, 71 against 48
- Security & auth, 77 against 52
- Maintenance & community, 78 against 46
- Transparency & trust, 73 against 61
Also in its favour
- Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 2.5 against 2.0 out of 5
Watch for
No public price, trial or self-serve signup. Access starts with a sales conversation
Guru E
Good for Companies already running Guru that want agents to answer from verified cards with each user's permissions, and to draft card changes.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 48 against 37
Also in its favour
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- No incidents deducted, where Cohere North loses 4 points for them
Watch for
No public prices, plans or trial, and the pricing page sends everyone to sales
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Cohere North | Guru | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 37 | 48 | Guru +11 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 85 | 58 | Cohere North +27 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 71 | 48 | Cohere North +23 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 77 | 52 | Cohere North +25 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 0 | 0 | even |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 78 | 46 | Cohere North +32 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 73 | 61 | Cohere North +12 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -4 | 0 | |
| Total | 55.4 · C | 45.3 · E |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Cohere North | Guru |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Cohere Inc. | Guru Technologies, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | https://mcp.api.getguru.com/mcp |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable 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 hosted service under Guru's terms of service. The Python SDK (guruhq/guru-py-sdk) is MIT, and the MCP server's public repository holds only a README and server.json |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | com.getguru/mcp-server |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | none |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (2) | 2/5 (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.
Guru
Hosted MCP server at https://mcp.api.getguru.com/mcp, registered as com.getguru/mcp-server in the official MCP registry. No public prices, plans or trial, and the pricing page sends everyone to sales.
Before you call either
Cohere North
- Get the North host from your admin and call https://<host>/api. Cohere-hosted examples use north.cohere.com
- Request an OAuth token with only the scopes the task needs, such as chat_v2_ext, rather than a pasted developer token
- Retry only when is_retryable is true, waiting retry_after_seconds or Retry-After, with backoff capped near 60 seconds
- Strip raw_prompt and raw_generation from chat responses before keeping them in context
- Use /v1/responses to call North through the OpenAI SDK by changing the base URL and key
Guru
- Ask the person for a Guru account. There's no trial or keyless route, and OAuth needs a pre-approved client
- Send
Authorization: Bearer email:tokento the MCP server when OAuth isn't available, and basic auth to https://api.getguru.com/api/v1/ - Use a collection token for read-only work. User tokens write with the user's full rights
- Follow the
Linkheader to page REST search results. Each page holds at most 50 cards - Confirm with a person before archiving or moving cards. Guru documents no confirmation step
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Cohere North or Guru?
Cohere North scores 55.4 (C) on agent readiness against Guru's 45.3 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Guru leads on reliability.
Do Cohere North and Guru need an API key?
Cohere North uses an OAuth sign-in. Guru takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.
Can an agent call Cohere North and Guru without installing anything?
No hosted endpoint is listed for Cohere North. Guru has a hosted endpoint at https://mcp.api.getguru.com/mcp.
Other comparisons with Cohere North or Guru
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/cohere-north-vs-guru.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/cohere-north.json·/api/v1/tools/guru.json - From a terminal
anchor compare cohere-north guru(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "cohere-north", "b": "guru"}at/mcp, no key