# Dust vs Lens (Thought Industries) (slim)

> Dust scores 62.8 (B) to Lens's 43.3 (E) for company knowledge search. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/dust-vs-thought-industries-lens.md (~2,700 tokens) · this version ~780 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/dust-vs-thought-industries-lens.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/dust-vs-thought-industries-lens
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-10-21
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

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.

- Dust: B 62.8, rank #473 of 1197 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/dust.min.md
- Lens (Thought Industries): E 43.3, rank #1041 of 1197 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/thought-industries-lens.min.md
- Dust, 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 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 Open source.
- Lens (Thought Industries), good 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 Free to start without a card; Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.3 against 2.8 out of 5.

| Category | Dust | Lens (Thought Industries) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 53 | 30 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 75 | 56 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 67 | 37 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 75 | 56 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 20 | 30 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 86 | 36 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 68 | 63 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Dust | Lens (Thought Industries) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Permutation Labs | Thought Industries, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://dust.tt/mcp` | `https://api.lens.thoughtindustries.com/mcp` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| 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 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 |
| Last release | 2026-10-08 | 2026-10-20 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked |  |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given |  |
| Popularity | 1.5k stars, 17k npm/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | 2.8/5 (4) | 3.3/5 (4) |