Head to head · Company knowledge search · October 2026 research run
Dust vs Glean
Glean scores 69.8 (B) on agent readiness against Dust's 62.8 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Dust leads on payments & pricing. Both do company knowledge search.
Which one, for what
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
- Payments & pricing, 20 against 0
Also in its favour
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Open source
Watch for
Programmatic usage has no free credits. It draws only on the workspace credit pool, which Free seats cannot use
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 53
- Schema & documentation, 93 against 75
- Agent ergonomics, 80 against 67
- Security & auth, 87 against 75
- Transparency & trust, 80 against 68
Watch for
No public price, trial or self-serve signup. Access starts with a demo request
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Dust | Glean | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 53 | 60 | Glean +7 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 75 | 93 | Glean +18 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 67 | 80 | Glean +13 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 75 | 87 | Glean +12 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 20 | 0 | Dust +20 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 86 | 85 | Dust +1 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 68 | 80 | Glean +12 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 62.8 · B | 69.8 · B |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Dust | Glean |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Permutation Labs | Glean Technologies, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | https://dust.tt/mcp | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | 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 | 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 | 2026-10-08 | 2026-10-02 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2026-04-01 |
| Customer content may train models | ||
| Terms restrict automated access | ||
| Terms restrict benchmarking | ||
| Terms or service can change without notice | ||
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | ||
| Popularity | 1.5k stars, 17k npm/wk | 58k npm/wk, 26k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.5/5 (2) |
Verdicts
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.
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
Dust
- Use
https://eu.dust.ttfor a workspace in the EU region andhttps://dust.ttotherwise, for both the API and the MCP server - Connect an MCP client by OAuth and send the
resourceparameter in authorisation and token requests. API keys do not work on the MCP server - Expect HTTP 429 with type
rate_limit_errorwhen the credit pool, the programmatic monthly cap or the key's spend cap is exhausted. Retrying will not help - Call
GET /api/v1/w/{wId}/searchwithlimit(1 to 100, default 25) andcursor, or a data source view's search withtop_k - Keep document upserts under 120 a minute per workspace
Glean
- 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>
- Ask for a user-scoped token with only the scopes the task needs. A global token can impersonate whoever
X-Glean-ActAsnames - Keep chat under 0.5 calls a second and search under 5, and back off on 429
- Call the Platform API's
/api/searchfor typed filters,page_sizeup to 100 and problem+json errors - Send
X-Glean-Exclude-Deprecated-Afterin tests to catch fields due for removal
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Dust or Glean?
Glean scores 69.8 (B) on agent readiness against Dust's 62.8 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Dust leads on payments & pricing.
Do Dust and Glean need an API key?
Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.
Can an agent call Dust and Glean without installing anything?
Dust has a hosted endpoint at https://dust.tt/mcp. No hosted endpoint is listed for Glean.
Are Dust and Glean open source?
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`). No open-source release is listed for Glean.
Other comparisons with Dust or Glean
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/dust-vs-glean.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/dust.json·/api/v1/tools/glean.json - From a terminal
anchor compare dust glean(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "dust", "b": "glean"}at/mcp, no key