# 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. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cohere-north-vs-guru
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cohere-north-vs-guru.md (~1,900 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cohere-north-vs-guru.min.md (~680 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cohere-north-vs-guru.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

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.

- 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
- Guru: grade E, 45.3/100, rank #407 of 460. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/guru.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/guru.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 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 | Cohere North | Guru | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 37 | 48 | Guru +11 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 85 | 58 | Cohere North +27 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 71 | 48 | Cohere North +23 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 77 | 52 | Cohere North +25 |
| 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 | 46 | Cohere North +32 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 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

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

### Guru

1. Ask the person for a Guru account. There's no trial or keyless route, and OAuth needs a pre-approved client
2. Send `Authorization: Bearer email:token` to the MCP server when OAuth isn't available, and basic auth to https://api.getguru.com/api/v1/
3. Use a collection token for read-only work. User tokens write with the user's full rights
4. Follow the `Link` header to page REST search results. Each page holds at most 50 cards
5. 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.


## For agents

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

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