GILD verdict
Choose Glean when the purchase is the system that answers questions about the company, and permissions, hosting, and connector breadth decide it.
Choose Perplexity for research on the outside world, with Projects holding the documents a team works from.
GILD found no named team that has published running both or choosing between them. A company can run both: Glean for company knowledge, and Perplexity seats for teams that need deeper cited web research than an admin-configured search tool gives. Perplexity starts from the public web and adds the company files each user uploads, connects, or adds to a Project. Glean starts from company apps, indexed through 275+ connectors with each source's permissions enforced, and reaches the web through search tools an admin configures.
Choosing between Perplexity and Glean
Choose Perplexity if
- The main need is cited research on markets, companies, and topics outside the company.
- Teams want published per-seat prices and can start with a card, without a platform deployment.
- The files a team works from fit in Projects of up to 10,000 files and 5 GB, or in its connected cloud drives.
Choose Glean if
- People need one search across many company apps, with results that follow each source's permissions as they change.
- Security requires single-tenant hosting or a deployment inside the company's own GCP or AWS environment.
- The company wants to build and govern agents on company data, with model usage billed at provider API rates.
Side by side
| Dimension | Perplexity | Glean |
|---|---|---|
| What it searches first | The public web, plus files a user uploads, connects, or adds to a Project | Company apps through 275+ native and MCP-based connectors, plus the web through OpenAI, Brave, or Gemini search tools an admin sets up |
| Permissions | Connector search reads the source at query time with the user's own account; Project imports are static copies any project member can search, while opening a file still needs source access | Each source's permissions are inherited and enforced in results, and permission changes appear as soon as they change at the source |
| Pricing | Published seats: Enterprise Pro US$40 a month or US$400 a year, Enterprise Max US$325 a month or US$3,250 a year, plus Computer credits | Core Suite licensed per user per month, with no public seat price, plus an upfront Model Hub commit charged at model provider API rates |
| Deployment | Perplexity's cloud; the Comet browser can be deployed to managed devices by MDM | Glean Hosted single-tenant SaaS, or Customer Hosted inside the company's own GCP or AWS environment |
| Audit | Audit logs stream queries, answers, file events, and Computer actions to a webhook, at 50 seats or with one Enterprise Max seat | Audits user access and agent tool history, and does not log individual user queries or responses |
| Models | A model picker on each query across several providers, with admin restrictions | Model Hub across OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Amazon, open models, and Glean's own Waldo, through Glean's key or the customer's |
| 200 seats a monthAsk Glean for a quote at your seat count. | About US$6,667 on Enterprise Pro at US$400 a seat a year. GILD's calculation from published rates, read Oct 28, 20262 | No published price; Glean sells by contract, so GILD could not compute a bill from published rates12 |
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, 73 points above Perplexity at −6. Most of the gap is in praise, with 27 of Glean's 37 sources positive against 22 of Perplexity's 65. Glean has 2 negative and Perplexity 26.
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. Each of Perplexity's authors wrote one source here, so each source is one vote.
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. Perplexity owns two that Glean does not, and Glean owns one that Perplexity 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 | Perplexity | Glean |
|---|---|---|
| Assist | ||
| AI assistant | Core | Supports |
| Find | ||
| Web research | Core | Touches |
| Enterprise search | Supports | Core |
| Create | ||
| Documents | Supports | Touches |
| Analyze | ||
| Data analysis | Supports | Touches |
The 2 layers where they match
| Layer | Perplexity | Glean |
|---|---|---|
| Create | ||
| Meeting notes | Touches | Touches |
| 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. Perplexity alone has four praise themes that reach 5 sources from 3 authors. Research speed and Cited answers lead, at 11 of 11 and 9 of 17.
| Praised for | Perplexity | Glean |
|---|---|---|
| Research speed | 11 of 11 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Cited answers | 9 of 17 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Deep Research & reports | 7 of 13 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Model choice | 6 of 8 | 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, Perplexity alone has six concern themes that reach 5 sources from 3 authors. Accuracy and Source quality lead, at 12 of 16 and 9 of 11. 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 | Perplexity | Glean |
|---|---|---|
| Accuracy | 12 of 16 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Source quality | 9 of 11 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Data & security | 8 of 10 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Feature gaps | 6 of 6 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Speed & reliability | 5 of 6 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Limits & pricing | 3 of 6 | Not a theme in its sources |
| Setup & Administration | Not a theme in its sources | 7 of 8 |
| Answer Accuracy | Not a theme in its sources | 5 of 6 |
| Price & Licensing | Not a theme in its sources | 3 of 6 |
15 sources
- Perplexity pricing (Individual and Enterprise tabs)
- Perplexity Help Center: Enterprise Pricing and Billing FAQ
- Perplexity Help Center: What are Projects?
- Perplexity Help Center: Using File Connectors in Perplexity
- Perplexity Help Center: Perplexity Connectors for Enterprise FAQ
- Perplexity Help Center: Enterprise file limits
- Perplexity Help Center: Audit Logs
- Perplexity Help Center: Comet for Enterprise
- Perplexity Help Center: What advanced AI models are included in my subscription?
- Glean: Connectors
- Glean: Enterprise search
- Glean docs: Glean Core Suite
- Glean docs: Glean deployment models
- Glean docs: Web Search tools setup
- Glean docs: Supported LLMs