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Glean vs IKI AI

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. IKI AI publishes a starting price ($15); Glean does not. Only IKI AI has a free tier. Only Glean ships a public API.

GleanPermission-aware search and agents across company applicationsIKI AIAI knowledge workspace that captures articles, PDFs, and videos into a personal library you can query and summarize.

Side by side

FactGleanIKI AI
CategoryPersonal & Enterprise SearchKnowledge Management & Wikis
Pricing modelContactFreemium
Starts at—$15 month
Public APIYesNo
PlatformsWeb, API, Slack App, Chrome ExtWeb, Chrome Ext
CompanyGlean TechnologiesIKI AI
Launched2019—
Last verifiedSep 6, 2026Sep 1, 2026

What our research says

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

IKI AI

IKI AI's value is collapsing research spread across articles, PDFs, and videos into one library an assistant can actually answer questions against, rather than being just another note app. The free tier is usable for light research but caps co-pilot requests tightly enough that regular use likely means upgrading.

Pros

  • Captures and auto-tags content from articles, PDFs, and video, not just text notes
  • Chrome extension makes capture possible while browsing, not just inside the app
  • Free Basic tier exists with no credit card required
  • Pro tier adds video transcription and unlimited assistant queries at a low $15/month

Cons

  • Free tier is capped at 50 co-pilot requests a month
  • Company location/country isn't disclosed on the site
  • No listed API for connecting the library to other tools

Which one fits

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

Choose IKI AI if you need

  • Researchers and knowledge workers collecting material from many sources
  • Users who want AI summarization and tagging applied automatically on capture
  • Teams wanting shared collections rather than individual scattered notes

More comparisons

All IKI AI alternatives →Browse all Personal & Enterprise Search →