# Secoda vs Lens (Thought Industries)

> Secoda scores 44.5 (E) to Lens's 43.3 (E) for company knowledge search. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/secoda-vs-thought-industries-lens
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/secoda-vs-thought-industries-lens.md (~2,800 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/secoda-vs-thought-industries-lens.min.md (~830 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/secoda-vs-thought-industries-lens.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-10-21

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.

- Secoda: grade E, 44.5/100, rank #1025 of 1197. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/secoda.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/secoda.json
- Lens (Thought Industries): grade E, 43.3/100, rank #1041 of 1197. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/thought-industries-lens.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/thought-industries-lens.json
- Best company knowledge search and data catalogues for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/company-knowledge/index.md
- All 112 knowledge comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/company-knowledge/index.md

## Which one, for what

### 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.

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)

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 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

| Category | Weight | Secoda | Lens (Thought Industries) | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 40 | 30 | Secoda +10 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 59 | 56 | Secoda +3 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 44 | 37 | Secoda +7 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 54 | 56 | Lens (Thought Industries) +2 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 0 | 30 | Lens (Thought Industries) +30 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 60 | 36 | Secoda +24 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 58 | 63 | Lens (Thought Industries) +5 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **44.5 · E** | **43.3 · E** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Secoda | Lens (Thought Industries) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Secoda, Inc. | Thought Industries, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.lens.thoughtindustries.com/mcp` |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Paid | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under the Secoda Master Subscription Agreement. The local MCP server in secoda/secoda-mcp is MIT | 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 |
| Tools exposed | 6 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-06 | 2026-10-20 |
| Terms last updated | no date given |  |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given |  |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text |  |
| Popularity | 1 stars | none |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (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.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/secoda-vs-thought-industries-lens.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/secoda-vs-thought-industries-lens.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "secoda", "b": "thought-industries-lens"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare secoda thought-industries-lens`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/secoda.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/thought-industries-lens.json

## Other comparisons with Secoda or Lens (Thought Industries)

- [Alation vs Lens (Thought Industries)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-thought-industries-lens.md)
- [Atlan vs Lens (Thought Industries)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atlan-vs-thought-industries-lens.md)
- [Cohere North vs Secoda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cohere-north-vs-secoda.md)
- [Cohere North vs Lens (Thought Industries)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cohere-north-vs-thought-industries-lens.md)
- [Collibra vs Lens (Thought Industries)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/collibra-vs-thought-industries-lens.md)
- [Dust vs Secoda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/dust-vs-secoda.md)
- [Dust vs Lens (Thought Industries)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/dust-vs-thought-industries-lens.md)
- [Gemini Enterprise vs Secoda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gemini-enterprise-vs-secoda.md)
- [Gemini Enterprise vs Lens (Thought Industries)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gemini-enterprise-vs-thought-industries-lens.md)
- [Glean vs Secoda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/glean-vs-secoda.md)
- [Glean vs Lens (Thought Industries)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/glean-vs-thought-industries-lens.md)
- [Guru vs Secoda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/guru-vs-secoda.md)
- [Guru vs Lens (Thought Industries)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/guru-vs-thought-industries-lens.md)
- [Hexis Cloud vs Secoda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hexis-vs-secoda.md)
- [Hexis Cloud vs Lens (Thought Industries)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hexis-vs-thought-industries-lens.md)
- [Onyx vs Secoda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/onyx-vs-secoda.md)
- [Onyx vs Lens (Thought Industries)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/onyx-vs-thought-industries-lens.md)
- [Overclock vs Secoda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/overclock-vs-secoda.md)
- [Overclock vs Lens (Thought Industries)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/overclock-vs-thought-industries-lens.md)
- [Procore AI Go vs Secoda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/procore-ai-go-vs-secoda.md)
- [Procore AI Go vs Lens (Thought Industries)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/procore-ai-go-vs-thought-industries-lens.md)
- [Alation vs Secoda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/alation-vs-secoda.md)
- [Atlan vs Secoda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atlan-vs-secoda.md)
- [Collibra vs Secoda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/collibra-vs-secoda.md)
- [DataHub vs Secoda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/datahub-vs-secoda.md)
- [Marmot vs Secoda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/marmot-vs-secoda.md)
- [OpenMetadata vs Secoda](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/openmetadata-vs-secoda.md)

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