GILD verdict
Start with Confluence and Rovo when Jira and Confluence hold most of what people ask about.
The AI comes with the seat and reads Atlassian content natively. Choose Glean when knowledge sits in many systems outside Atlassian, or when the search tenant must run in your own cloud. Glean also indexes Confluence, so run the same real questions through both before paying for a second search layer.
GILD found no named team that has published running Rovo and Glean side by side or choosing between them. The Confluence side of this comparison is Rovo, Atlassian's AI layer across Confluence, Jira, and other Atlassian apps. Rovo comes with Standard, Premium, and Enterprise Cloud plans with no separate purchase, and each Confluence seat adds 25, 70, or 150 Rovo credits a month to the organization's shared pool. Rovo wins on cost for companies whose answers sit in Atlassian, and Glean wins on reach. Glean covers 275+ apps against Rovo's 56 listed connectors. It sells a separate per-user license and publishes no dollar price.
Choosing between Confluence and Glean
Choose Confluence if
- Most of your knowledge lives in Confluence and Jira, and the rest in apps on Atlassian's connector list.
- You want AI inside the Confluence seat: Rovo comes with Standard, Premium, and Enterprise, with 25, 70, or 150 credits per user per month pooled across the organization.
- You want other AI tools to reach Confluence and Jira through the Atlassian MCP server.
Choose Glean if
- Knowledge is spread across many systems outside Atlassian, including CRMs and others Rovo does not list.
- You need the search tenant isolated in Glean's cloud or your own GCP or AWS account.
- You want one assistant across every app, with Confluence as one source among many.
Side by side
| Dimension | Confluence | Glean |
|---|---|---|
| Primary job | The team wiki itself, with Rovo Search, Chat, Studio, and agents built in | Enterprise search and an assistant across company apps, with agents and Glean Protect |
| What it searches | Confluence, Jira, and other Atlassian apps natively, plus 56 listed connectors such as Google Drive, SharePoint, Slack, Microsoft Teams, GitHub, and Notion. Indexed objects capped at 100, 250, or 625 per user by plan | 275+ apps through native, MCP, and push connectors; its Confluence connector searches pages, spaces, and comments and can create and update pages |
| How you buy itList prices in US dollars from each vendor's pages. Glean publishes its pricing structure but no dollar figures. | Standard US$5.78 and Premium US$11.16 per user per month at 300 users, billed monthly. Enterprise from 801 users, billed annually through Atlassian sales. Rovo on all three with 25, 70, or 150 pooled credits per user per month | Per-user, per-month license under Core Suite or Enterprise Flex, with no public price; Premium models and agent runs use FlexCredits or Model Hub usage |
| Agents | Rovo agents built in Studio by anyone by default, run in Chat, the editor, and automation flows, acting with the user's permissions; basic runs cost 10 credits, advanced runs more | Glean Agents built in Agent Builder, shared through an agent library; runs consume FlexCredits |
| Hosting and residency | Atlassian Cloud with data residency for Confluence and Rovo in regions such as the EU, Germany, Australia, and Japan | Single-tenant Glean Hosted in multiple GCP and AWS regions, or Customer Hosted in your own GCP or AWS account |
| Models | Atlassian-hosted open models plus OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google models, routed per request; Atlassian-hosted only on request for Enterprise | Model Hub with models from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and Amazon, with your own keys or Glean's |
| Data use | LLM providers keep no inputs or outputs. Atlassian keeps Chat and agent inputs and outputs 30 days. From August 17, 2026 Free and Standard organizations contribute in-app data unless an admin opts out | Zero LLM data retention and no training of LLMs on enterprise data |
| 200 seats a monthNo Rovo credit overage assumed; ask Glean for a quote at your seat count. | About US$1,042 on Standard with Rovo included, from a US$12,500 annual invoice at the 200-seat tier. GILD's calculation from published rates, read Oct 28, 20261 | No published price; Glean sells by contract, so GILD could not compute a bill from published rates15 |
What practitioners report, side by side
Each product's figures come from its own practitioners, for the group you pick.
Overall signal
All users rate Glean +67, 78 points above Confluence at −11. Most of the gap is in complaints, with 50 of Confluence's 100 sources negative against 2 of Glean's 37.
The score counts the authors from all users that take a side, one vote each with their latest view, and is how far positive votes lead negative ones, per 100 votes, so Confluence's −11 rests on votes split 38 positive, 12 mixed and 49 negative and Glean's +67 on 26, 8 and 2.
A lead of a fifth of the votes reads positive and a lead of half strong positive, with the same lines below zero. The dots show each source, positive, mixed, negative. Run a pilot with one team to measure how much of its planning and writing stays in the tool after a month.
Footprint on the AI Knowledge Work stack
They differ on one of 7 layers. On Documents, Confluence is core and Glean touches it. Coverage is each product's placement on this stack, as its product page shows it. Core is a job the product owns; Supports and Touches are jobs it helps with. Coverage says nothing about how well a product does them.
| Layer | Confluence | Glean |
|---|---|---|
| Create | ||
| Documents | Core | Touches |
The 6 layers where they match
| Layer | Confluence | Glean |
|---|---|---|
| Assist | ||
| AI assistant | Supports | Supports |
| Find | ||
| Web research | Touches | Touches |
| Enterprise search | Core | Core |
| Create | ||
| Meeting notes | Touches | Touches |
| Analyze | ||
| Data analysis | Touches | Touches |
| Automate | ||
| Automation | Supports | Supports |
What practitioners praise
Among all users, Confluence alone has five praise themes that reach 5 sources from 3 authors. Answers Across Confluence & Jira and Pages, Spaces & Permissions lead, at 16 of 18 and 11 of 15. Glean alone has five praise themes that reach 5 sources from 3 authors. Agents & Automation and Cross-App Search lead, at 15 of 19 and 9 of 10.
| Praised for | Confluence | Glean |
|---|---|---|
| Answers Across Confluence & Jira | 16 of 18 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Pages, Spaces & Permissions | 11 of 15 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Works With Jira | 10 of 10 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Agents, Automation & MCP | 8 of 11 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Writing & Summaries | 8 of 13 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Agents & Automation | Not a theme in its sources | 15 of 19 |
| Cross-App Search | Not a theme in its sources | 9 of 10 |
| Connector Coverage | Not a theme in its sources | 7 of 10 |
| Permission-Aware Results | Not a theme in its sources | 5 of 6 |
| Grounded Answers | Not a theme in its sources | 4 of 8 |
Each count is the sources that praise a theme, or raise it as a concern, out of those that discuss it. A row pairs the two products when both carry a theme under the same or an equivalent name.
A count ending in "so far" has under 5 sources from 3 authors among all users. "Not a theme in its sources" means GILD found no theme of that name in that product's sources.
What practitioners raise as concerns
Among all users, Confluence alone has five concern themes that reach 5 sources from 3 authors. Confluence Search and AI Placement & Opt-Out lead, at 14 of 17 and 13 of 13. Both carry Answer Accuracy. It is raised in all 12 Confluence sources that discuss it, against 5 of 6 for Glean. Setup & Administration and Price & Licensing reach 5 sources from 3 authors only for Glean, at 7 of 8 and 3 of 6. Confluence needs a pilot on the same projects before you choose on either.
| Raised as a concern | Confluence | Glean |
|---|---|---|
| Answer Accuracy | 12 of 12 | 5 of 6 |
| Confluence Search | 14 of 17 | Not a theme in its sources |
| AI Placement & Opt-Out | 13 of 13 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Speed & Page Loads | 12 of 13 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Data Use & Security | 7 of 9 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Cloud-Only Move | 3 of 5 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Setup & Administration | Not a theme in its sources | 7 of 8 |
| Price & Licensing | Not a theme in its sources | 3 of 6 |
18 sources
- Confluence pricing
- Atlassian: Rovo plans and trial
- Atlassian Support: How Rovo credits work
- Atlassian: Available Rovo connectors
- Atlassian Support: Rovo data, privacy, and usage guidelines
- Atlassian Support: Understand data residency
- Atlassian Support: Data contribution settings
- Atlassian Trust Center: Rovo AI security and trust
- Atlassian Support: Rovo agent permissions and governance
- Atlassian Support: Get started with the Atlassian MCP server
- Glean: Connectors
- Glean: Confluence integration with Glean
- Glean docs: Glean deployment models
- Glean docs: Glean Enterprise Flex pricing
- Glean docs: Glean Core Suite pricing
- Glean docs: About Glean Protect and Protect+
- Glean docs: Supported LLMs
- Glean docs: About Glean MCP server