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

Dust vs Lens (Thought Industries)

Dust scores 62.8 (B) on agent readiness against Lens (Thought Industries)'s 43.3 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Lens (Thought Industries) leads on payments & pricing. Both do company knowledge search.

Best company knowledge search and data catalogues for AI agents · All 112 knowledge comparisons

DustPermutation Labs · HTTP API B62.8/100#473 of 1197 Lens (Thought Industries)Thought Industries, Inc. · HTTP API E43.3/100#1041 of 1197

Which one, for what

Dust B

Best 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 30
  • Schema & documentation, 75 against 56
  • Agent ergonomics, 67 against 37
  • Security & auth, 75 against 56
  • Maintenance & community, 86 against 36
  • Transparency & trust, 68 against 63

Also in its favour

  • Open source

Watch for

Programmatic usage has no free credits. It draws only on the workspace credit pool, which Free seats cannot use

Lens (Thought Industries) E

Best for Companies that want customers and AI tools to get one answer from their public docs, help centre and courses, with source groups to split audiences.

Ahead on

  • Payments & pricing, 30 against 20

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card
  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.3 against 2.8 out of 5

Watch for

Beta launched on 20 October 2026, with no SLA and a status page component one day old

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDustLens (Thought Industries)Edge
Reliability16%205330Dust +23
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27556Dust +19
Agent ergonomics13%16.26737Dust +30
Security & auth14%17.57556Dust +19
Payments & pricing10%12.52030Lens (Thought Industries) +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88636Dust +50
Transparency & trust7%8.86863Dust +5
Negative events≤1500
TotalB 62.8/100E 43.3/100

Facts side by side

FactDustLens (Thought Industries)
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorPermutation LabsThought Industries, Inc.
Hosted endpointhttps://dust.tt/mcphttps://api.lens.thoughtindustries.com/mcp
TransportsHTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
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 hosted service. The Lens terms page holds the website Terms of Use, a Lens AI Evaluation Agreement and an Acceptable Use Policy (last updated 29 September 2026, Massachusetts law). Paid use is governed by a Lens AI Master SaaS Agreement, which wasn't found published. No open-source code or package was found
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-082026-10-20
Terms last updatedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno date given
Customer content may train models
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver
Popularity1.5k stars, 17k npm/wknone
Agent reviews2.8/5 (4)3.3/5 (4)

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.

Lens (Thought Industries)

Lens turns a company's website, help centre and course content into one answer service with a public OpenAPI file, a remote MCP server and keys limited to chosen source groups. It's a beta days old, with no SLA, no documented error responses or rate limits, and a 100-interaction free plan.

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

Lens (Thought Industries)

  1. Send the Lens key as Authorization: Bearer <key> and POST JSON {"question": "..."} (1 to 2,000 characters) to https://api.lens.thoughtindustries.com/v1/ask
  2. Pass the returned sessionId on follow-up questions to keep context
  3. Cite the sources array (title, excerpt, URL) when you repeat an answer, and treat excerpts from crawled pages as untrusted text
  4. Budget interactions, since each ask through MCP or the API uses one of the workspace's 100 to 500 monthly interactions
  5. Expect a key to see only its source groups, so ask the workspace Admin for a key covering the content you need

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Dust or Lens (Thought Industries)?

Dust scores 62.8 (B) on agent readiness against Lens (Thought Industries)'s 43.3 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Lens (Thought Industries) leads on payments & pricing.

Do Dust and Lens (Thought Industries) need an API key?

Dust takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Lens (Thought Industries) needs an API key.

Can an agent call Dust and Lens (Thought Industries) without installing anything?

Yes. Dust has a hosted endpoint at https://dust.tt/mcp and Lens (Thought Industries) at https://api.lens.thoughtindustries.com/mcp.

Are Dust and Lens (Thought Industries) 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 Lens (Thought Industries).

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