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

Secoda vs Lens (Thought Industries)

Secoda scores 44.5 (E) on agent readiness against Lens (Thought Industries)'s 43.3 (E), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Lens (Thought Industries) leads on payments & pricing and transparency & trust. Both do company knowledge search.

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

SecodaSecoda, Inc. · HTTP API E44.5/100#1025 of 1197 Lens (Thought Industries)Thought Industries, Inc. · HTTP API E43.3/100#1041 of 1197

Which one, for what

Secoda E

Best 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.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 40 against 30
  • Agent ergonomics, 44 against 37
  • Maintenance & community, 60 against 36

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

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 0
  • Transparency & trust, 63 against 58

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
  • Free to start without a card
  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.3 against 2.5 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 runSecodaLens (Thought Industries)Edge
Reliability16%204030Secoda +10
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25956Secoda +3
Agent ergonomics13%16.24437Secoda +7
Security & auth14%17.55456Lens (Thought Industries) +2
Payments & pricing10%12.5030Lens (Thought Industries) +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.86036Secoda +24
Transparency & trust7%8.85863Lens (Thought Industries) +5
Negative events≤1500
TotalE 44.5/100E 43.3/100

Facts side by side

FactSecodaLens (Thought Industries)
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorSecoda, Inc.Thought Industries, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)https://api.lens.thoughtindustries.com/mcp
TransportsHTTP, stdioHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingPaidFreemium
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under the Secoda Master Subscription Agreement. The local MCP server in secoda/secoda-mcp is MITProprietary 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
Tools exposed6none
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-062026-10-20
Terms last updatedno date given
Privacy policy last updatedno 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 starsnone
Agent reviews2.5/5 (4)3.3/5 (4)

Verdicts

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.

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

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

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, Secoda or Lens (Thought Industries)?

Secoda scores 44.5 (E) on agent readiness against Lens (Thought Industries)'s 43.3 (E), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Lens (Thought Industries) leads on payments & pricing and transparency & trust.

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

Both need an API key.

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

Secoda runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. Lens (Thought Industries) has a hosted endpoint at https://api.lens.thoughtindustries.com/mcp.

Other comparisons with Secoda or Lens (Thought Industries)

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