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Curiosity 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.

The short answer

Public API
Both have one
Best fit
Curiosity: Aerospace, rail, and manufacturing engineering teams · Glean: Organisations above roughly 500 people whose knowledge is scattered across a dozen SaaS tools
Platforms
Curiosity: Web · Glean: Web, Slack app, Chrome extension
Trust score
About even — Curiosity 92, Glean 90
Status
Both up at our last check — Curiosity Oct 15, 2026, Glean Oct 16, 2026

From our own records as of each tool's last check. Anything we have not confirmed is left out rather than guessed. How we verify

Side by side

FactCuriosityGlean
CategoryEnterprise SearchPersonal & Enterprise Search
Pricing modelContactContact
Public APIYesYes
Trust score92 / 10090 / 100
PlatformsWeb, APIWeb, API, Slack app, Chrome extension
CompanyCuriosity GmbHGlean Technologies, Inc.
Launched20182019
Last verifiedOct 15, 2026Oct 16, 2026

What our research says

Curiosity

Curiosity is built for regulated engineering-heavy industries that need to search across disconnected legacy systems with clear source attribution, not for a general team knowledge base. The free developer version is real but capped at 10 test users on your own machine, and any production deployment starts at 50 users and needs a sales conversation.

Pros

  • Connects many disconnected enterprise systems into one queryable layer
  • On-premises and private-cloud deployment for data sovereignty
  • Answers carry source attribution and full audit trails
  • Free developer version for local testing with no time limit

Cons

  • No published price; Enterprise Studio starts at 50 users and is quote-only
  • Data and model APIs, custom data types and hosting are Enterprise-only
  • Built for industrial/engineering data, not general office 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 Curiosity if you need

  • Aerospace, rail, and manufacturing engineering teams
  • Organizations needing on-premises or private-cloud AI search
  • Teams that need source-traceable answers, not just chat

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

Curiosity vs Glean: the questions people ask

Which has a public API, Curiosity or Glean?

Both ship a public API, so either can be built on; the fact table above shows the platforms each one runs on.

Browse all Enterprise Search →