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Cluing vs Glean

Two fact sheets from our own research, side by side — pricing, platforms, API access and status re-checked by us rather than quoted from the vendors. Cluing publishes a starting price ($12); Glean does not. Only Cluing has a free tier. Only Glean ships a public API.

CluingBrowser highlights and PDFs turn into a shared, self-organizing knowledge base agents can act on.GleanPermission-aware search and agents across company applications

Side by side

FactCluingGlean
CategoryKnowledge Management & WikisPersonal & Enterprise Search
Pricing modelFreemiumContact
Starts at$12 month—
Public APINoYes
PlatformsWeb, Chrome ExtWeb, API, Slack App, Chrome Ext
CompanyCollabwriting Inc.Glean Technologies
Launched—2019
Last verifiedSep 1, 2026Sep 6, 2026

What our research says

Cluing

Cluing solves a specific problem — a team's research and highlights scattering across browser tabs and personal notes — by routing everything into one shared, searchable base that its agents can then draft from. It is most useful once a team is actually capturing enough material for the organizing and agent features to pay off; below that, the free plan's 5-cluster cap will feel tight fast.

Pros

  • Browser extension captures highlights directly from web pages and PDFs
  • Free tier is usable enough to evaluate the core workflow before paying
  • ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification is a real signal for teams with security requirements

Cons

  • Free plan's 5-cluster and 5-guest limits are restrictive for anything beyond a quick trial
  • Team plan jumps to $140/month, a large step up from the $12/month individual Pro plan
  • Value depends on a consistent team habit of highlighting and organizing, not just occasional use

Glean

Glean is the reference implementation of permission-aware enterprise search, and permissions are the hard part everyone else underestimates. It is also priced so that only companies with a real sprawl problem can justify it.

Pros

  • Permission inheritance from each connected system is done properly, not approximated
  • Answers cite and link the underlying documents rather than paraphrasing them away
  • Connector coverage across the mainstream SaaS estate is broad
  • Commercially solid: about $300M ARR by May 2026 at a $7.2B valuation

Cons

  • No published price anywhere, and contracts start in six figures
  • Value depends entirely on connector coverage of your specific stack
  • Index quality inherits whatever mess exists in the source systems
  • Overlaps increasingly with Microsoft and Google's bundled offerings, which cost nothing extra

Which one fits

Choose Cluing if you need

  • Small research or content teams who highlight a lot of web and PDF material
  • Consultants and founders who want shared institutional knowledge instead of individual notes
  • Teams that want to turn saved research directly into drafts like SEO posts or reports

Choose Glean if you need

  • Organisations above roughly 500 people whose knowledge is scattered across a dozen SaaS tools
  • Regulated or security-conscious buyers who need source-system permissions honoured exactly
  • Teams building internal agents that need governed access to company context

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