Get an audit

Head to head · Company knowledge search · October 2026 research run

Dust vs Secoda

Dust scores 62.8 (B) on agent readiness against Secoda's 44.5 (E), and leads in every scored category. Both do company knowledge search.

Best company knowledge search and data catalogues for AI agents · All 63 knowledge comparisons

DustPermutation Labs · HTTP API B62.8/100#419 of 950 SecodaSecoda, Inc. · HTTP API E44.5/100#875 of 950

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

  • Reliability, 53 against 40
  • Schema & documentation, 75 against 59
  • Agent ergonomics, 67 against 44
  • Security & auth, 75 against 54
  • Payments & pricing, 20 against 0
  • Maintenance & community, 86 against 60
  • Transparency & trust, 68 against 58

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

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

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

CategoryWeight this runDustSecodaEdge
Reliability16%205340Dust +13
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27559Dust +16
Agent ergonomics13%16.26744Dust +23
Security & auth14%17.57554Dust +21
Payments & pricing10%12.5200Dust +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88660Dust +26
Transparency & trust7%8.86858Dust +10
Negative events≤1500
Total62.8 · B44.5 · E

Facts side by side

FactDustSecoda
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorPermutation LabsSecoda, Inc.
Hosted endpointhttps://dust.tt/mcpno (local only)
TransportsHTTPHTTP, stdio
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumPaid
x402nono
LicenceMIT 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-cliProprietary service under the Secoda Master Subscription Agreement. The local MCP server in secoda/secoda-mcp is MIT
Tools exposednone6
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-082026-10-06
Terms last updatedno document linkedno date given
Privacy policy last updatedno date givenno date given
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the text
Popularity1.5k stars, 17k npm/wk1 stars

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.

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

Dust

  1. Use https://eu.dust.tt for a workspace in the EU region and https://dust.tt otherwise, for both the API and the MCP server
  2. Connect an MCP client by OAuth and send the resource parameter in authorisation and token requests. API keys do not work on the MCP server
  3. Expect HTTP 429 with type rate_limit_error when the credit pool, the programmatic monthly cap or the key's spend cap is exhausted. Retrying will not help
  4. Call GET /api/v1/w/{wId}/search with limit (1 to 100, default 25) and cursor, or a data source view's search with top_k
  5. Keep document upserts under 120 a minute per workspace

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, Dust or Secoda?

Dust scores 62.8 (B) on agent readiness against Secoda's 44.5 (E), and leads in every scored category.

Do Dust and Secoda need an API key?

Dust takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Secoda needs an API key.

Can an agent call Dust and Secoda without installing anything?

Dust has a hosted endpoint at https://dust.tt/mcp. Secoda runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed.

Are Dust and Secoda 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 Secoda.

Other comparisons with Dust or Secoda

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.

Get an auditSee a sample report