# Cohere North vs Secoda

> Cohere North scores 55.1 (C) to Secoda's 44.5 (E) for company knowledge search. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cohere-north-vs-secoda
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cohere-north-vs-secoda.md (~2,300 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cohere-north-vs-secoda.min.md (~680 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cohere-north-vs-secoda.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

Cohere North scores 55.1 (C) on agent readiness against Secoda's 44.5 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do company knowledge search.

- Cohere North: grade C, 55.1/100, rank #666 of 950. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cohere-north.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cohere-north.json
- Secoda: grade E, 44.5/100, rank #875 of 950. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/secoda.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/secoda.json
- Best company knowledge search and data catalogues for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/company-knowledge/index.md
- All 63 knowledge comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/company-knowledge/index.md

## 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 59
- Agent ergonomics, 71 against 44
- Security & auth, 77 against 54
- Maintenance & community, 78 against 60
- Transparency & trust, 69 against 58

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

### Secoda (E)

Good for: A data team already on Secoda that wants an agent to read and edit catalogue metadata, lineage, documents and glossary terms, or to search the catalogue and run SQL through the local MCP server.

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine
- No incidents deducted, where Cohere North loses 4 points for them

Watch for: No price is published. The three plans (Core, Premium, Enterprise) link to a sales form, and no trial or sign-up button was found on the site


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Cohere North | Secoda | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 37 | 40 | Secoda +3 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 85 | 59 | Cohere North +26 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 71 | 44 | Cohere North +27 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 77 | 54 | Cohere North +23 |
| 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 | 60 | Cohere North +18 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 69 | 58 | Cohere North +11 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -4 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **55.1 · C** | **44.5 · E** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Cohere North | Secoda |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Cohere Inc. | Secoda, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | OAuth | API 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 the Secoda Master Subscription Agreement. The local MCP server in secoda/secoda-mcp is MIT |
| Tools exposed | none | 6 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-10-06 |
| Terms last updated | 2022-09-07 | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-05-01 | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | none | 1 stars |
| 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.

**Secoda.** The REST API reference embeds OpenAPI 3.0 definitions on every page, with `llms.txt` and Markdown copies, and the subscription agreement carries a 99.9 per cent uptime commitment. No price, trial or sign-up is published, no status page was found, and the public changelog stops at 28 October 2025 although self-hosted releases continue.

## 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

### Secoda

1. Pick the base URL by workspace region. `app.secoda.co` uses `api.secoda.co`, `eu.secoda.co` uses `eapi.secoda.co` and `apac.secoda.co` uses `aapi.secoda.co`
2. Keep writes under 30 PUT, PATCH or POST calls a minute on entity endpoints, and back off on a 429
3. List with `/api/v1/resource/catalog` and a URL-encoded JSON `filter`. The per-type list endpoints for tables are marked deprecated, and results stop at 10,000 resources
4. Send at most 100 entities to `/api/v1/resource/all/bulk_update/` in one request
5. Add a trailing slash when an endpoint does not behave as expected, as the docs advise
6. Treat an API key as the creating user. `run_sql` in the MCP server works only when an admin has enabled Run SQL and the user has query access to the integration

## Questions

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

Cohere North scores 55.1 (C) on agent readiness against Secoda's 44.5 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories.

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

Cohere North uses an OAuth sign-in. Secoda needs an API key.

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

No hosted endpoint is listed for Cohere North. Secoda runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Cohere North or Secoda

- [Alation vs Cohere North](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-cohere-north.md)
- [Atlan vs Cohere North](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atlan-vs-cohere-north.md)
- [Cohere North vs Collibra](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cohere-north-vs-collibra.md)
- [Cohere North vs Dust](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cohere-north-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 Secoda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/dust-vs-secoda.md)
- [Glean vs Secoda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/glean-vs-secoda.md)
- [Guru vs Secoda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/guru-vs-secoda.md)
- [Onyx vs Secoda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/onyx-vs-secoda.md)
- [Overclock vs Secoda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/overclock-vs-secoda.md)
- [Alation vs Secoda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-secoda.md)
- [Atlan vs Secoda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atlan-vs-secoda.md)
- [Collibra vs Secoda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/collibra-vs-secoda.md)
- [DataHub vs Secoda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/datahub-vs-secoda.md)
- [Marmot vs Secoda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/marmot-vs-secoda.md)
- [OpenMetadata vs Secoda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/openmetadata-vs-secoda.md)