GILD verdict
Choose Microsoft Copilot if your company's answers live in Microsoft 365, since it works inside Office apps.
It costs US$30 per user per month above the base plan. Choose Glean if knowledge is spread across Slack, Google, Atlassian, and CRM tools, or the search tenant must run in your own cloud. Test both on the same internal questions before signing.
McCarthy Holdings picked Glean after a head-to-head trial against Microsoft Copilot, in Glean's own customer story. Glean wins on reach across apps, and Copilot wins on a known price inside one suite. Copilot centers on Microsoft Graph plus 100+ connectors. Glean is sold by contract with no published price and indexes 275+ apps.
Choosing between Glean and Microsoft Copilot
Choose Glean if
- Much of your knowledge sits outside Microsoft 365, in Slack, Google Workspace, Atlassian, Salesforce, GitHub, and other apps.
- You need the deployment inside your own GCP or AWS account, or want to choose among 40+ models from several providers.
- You want company context available to other AI tools, since Glean's MCP server exposes search, chat, and agents to hosts such as Claude Desktop and Cursor.
Choose Microsoft Copilot if
- Your company runs on Microsoft 365, so mail, Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive already hold most of what employees ask about.
- You want a published per-user price: Microsoft 365 Copilot lists at US$30 per user per month paid yearly.
- You want the assistant inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams, with Copilot Chat already included for eligible subscribers.
Side by side
| Dimension | Glean | Microsoft Copilot |
|---|---|---|
| PriceUS dollars, as listed on each vendor's pages on Oct 12, 2026. Microsoft's prices add to a qualifying Microsoft 365 plan. | No published list price; per-user seats under Glean Core Suite or Enterprise Flex, plus Model Hub usage at provider API rates or pooled FlexCredits | Microsoft 365 Copilot US$30.00 per user per month paid yearly, or US$31.50 paid monthly on an annual commitment. Microsoft 365 Copilot Business US$21.00 per user per month paid yearly, with a US$18.00 first-year promotion on annual orders placed July 1 to December 31, 2026 |
| Prerequisite | None beyond SSO; Glean connects to the apps you already run | A qualifying Microsoft 365 or Office 365 plan, such as Business Premium, E3, or E5; Microsoft 365 E7 includes Copilot |
| Free tier | None published | Copilot Chat with web grounding is included with eligible Microsoft 365 subscriptions; work-grounded chat needs a Copilot license |
| Connectors | 275+ native, MCP, and push API connectors, plus the Indexing API for custom sources and on-premises systems | Microsoft Graph content plus 100+ Copilot connectors; custom connectors through the Microsoft Graph connectors API, and an on-premises connector agent |
| Permissions | Connectors fetch each source's permissions map, and results follow the permissions set in the source app | Surfaces only organizational data a user already has permission to open; connector items carry an access control list from the source |
| Oversharing controls | Inclusion and exclusion rules per connector and one-time sensitive content reports in Protect; weekly and continuous scanning with auto-hiding in the Protect+ add-on | SharePoint Advanced Management and admin controls to address oversharing, listed with Microsoft 365 Copilot |
| Agents | Glean Agents built in Agent Builder, with triggers, an agent library, and governed publishing; agent runs consume FlexCredits | Researcher, Analyst, and Facilitator agents, an Agent Store, and Copilot Studio, whose agents bill in Copilot Credits pay-as-you-go or through prepaid packs |
| Where it runs | Glean Hosted, single-tenant in GCP or AWS regions with regional data residency, or Customer Hosted in your GCP or AWS account | Inside the Microsoft 365 service boundary; an EU Data Boundary service for EU customers, with Anthropic models currently excluded from it |
| Data use | Zero LLM data retention; the Glean Universal Model Key gives LLM access with zero-day data retention and no training on enterprise data; no logging of individual user queries or responses | Prompts, responses, and Microsoft Graph data are not used to train foundation LLMs; prompts and responses are logged under your retention policies for eDiscovery |
| Certifications listed | ISO 42001, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, HIPAA, TX-RAMP Level 2, and GDPR | Enterprise data protection with GDPR, ISO/IEC 27018, and the Microsoft Data Protection Addendum |
| 200 seats a monthAsk Glean for a quote at your seat count before comparing. | No published price; Glean sells by contract, so GILD could not compute a bill from published rates8 | US$4,200 on Copilot Business at US$21 a seat paid yearly, over an existing qualifying Microsoft 365 plan. GILD's calculation from published rates, read Oct 28, 202613 |
| What named teams did | McCarthy Holdings chose Glean after a head-to-head trial against Copilot, for cross-system search and model choice, per Glean's undated customer story19 | HMRC randomly allocated 3,000 staff a full Copilot license from September to December 2024; 83% used it, and participants self-reported saving around 60 minutes a week, per HMRC's evaluation of Jul 9, 202620 |
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, 82 points above Microsoft Copilot at −15. Most of the gap is in praise, with 27 of Glean's 37 sources positive against 18 of Microsoft Copilot's 70. Glean has 2 negative and Microsoft Copilot 29.
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 Glean's +67 rests on votes split 26 positive, 8 mixed and 2 negative and Microsoft Copilot's −15 on 18, 19 and 28.
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 on questions your team already asks to measure how often the answer is right and cites its source.
Footprint on the AI Knowledge Work stack
They differ on five of 7 layers. Microsoft Copilot owns one that Glean does not. 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 | Glean | Microsoft Copilot |
|---|---|---|
| Assist | ||
| AI assistant | Supports | Core |
| Find | ||
| Web research | Touches | Supports |
| Create | ||
| Documents | Touches | Supports |
| Meeting notes | Touches | Supports |
| Analyze | ||
| Data analysis | Touches | Supports |
The 2 layers where they match
| Layer | Glean | Microsoft Copilot |
|---|---|---|
| Find | ||
| Enterprise search | Core | Core |
| Automate | ||
| Automation | Supports | Supports |
What practitioners praise
Among all users, 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. Microsoft Copilot alone has five praise themes that reach 5 sources from 3 authors. Meeting Recaps and Microsoft 365 Reach lead, at 9 of 10 and 9 of 16.
| Praised for | Glean | Microsoft Copilot |
|---|---|---|
| Agents & Automation | 15 of 19 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Cross-App Search | 9 of 10 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Connector Coverage | 7 of 10 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Permission-Aware Results | 5 of 6 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Grounded Answers | 4 of 8 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Meeting Recaps | Not a theme in its sources | 9 of 10 |
| Microsoft 365 Reach | Not a theme in its sources | 9 of 16 |
| Enterprise Data Terms | Not a theme in its sources | 7 of 9 |
| Agents & Cowork | Not a theme in its sources | 6 of 13 |
| Answer Quality | Not a theme in its sources | 4 of 16 |
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, Microsoft Copilot alone has six concern themes that reach 5 sources from 3 authors. Inconsistent Output and Admin Controls lead, at 10 of 10 and 8 of 8. Glean alone has three concern themes that reach 5 sources from 3 authors. Setup & Administration and Answer Accuracy lead, at 7 of 8 and 5 of 6.
| Raised as a concern | Glean | Microsoft Copilot |
|---|---|---|
| Setup & Administration | 7 of 8 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Answer Accuracy | 5 of 6 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Price & Licensing | 3 of 6 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Inconsistent Output | Not a theme in its sources | 10 of 10 |
| Admin Controls | Not a theme in its sources | 8 of 8 |
| Feature Gaps | Not a theme in its sources | 8 of 8 |
| License Cost & Confusion | Not a theme in its sources | 6 of 7 |
| Oversharing | Not a theme in its sources | 5 of 5 |
| Low Adoption | Not a theme in its sources | 5 of 7 |
20 sources
- Glean: Connectors
- Glean docs: About connectors
- Glean docs: Glean deployment models
- Glean docs: About Glean Protect and Protect+
- Glean Protect: AI security
- Glean docs: Secure configuration best practices
- Glean docs: Glean Enterprise Flex pricing
- Glean docs: Glean Core Suite pricing
- Glean: Enterprise AI agents
- Glean docs: About Glean MCP server
- Glean docs: Supported LLMs
- Microsoft Copilot for enterprise: plans and pricing
- Microsoft Copilot for business: plans and pricing
- Microsoft Learn: License options for Microsoft Copilot
- Microsoft Learn: Data, privacy, and security for Microsoft Copilot
- Microsoft Learn: Copilot connectors overview
- Microsoft Learn: What is Microsoft Copilot?
- Microsoft Learn: Copilot Studio licensing for agents
- Glean customer story: McCarthy Holdings (undated, read Oct 28, 2026)
- HMRC: Evaluating the impact of Microsoft Copilot in HMRC (Jul 9, 2026)