Kit for AI vs Glean
Glean is an enterprise search assistant across your work apps. If you want an all-in-one, private and cheaper enterprise work AI / knowledge search that also converts documents, remembers, recalls and searches the web, Kit for AI is the better fit.
What Glean does well
Glean is a powerful enterprise platform that indexes your SaaS tools (Slack, Drive, Jira…) for company-wide search and assistants.
Why teams choose Kit for AI
- Kit for AI is developer-first and self-serve: build a knowledge base for AI in minutes with an API and MCP, no enterprise rollout.
- You control the documents and the local models — no per-seat enterprise contract.
- Includes conversion, memory, skills and web search, starting free.
How Kit for AI is built
The difference isn't just scope — it's technique. Here's what drives more accurate, cheaper, more private answers.
Hybrid retrieval, not vector-only
Most memory and RAG tools rank passages by vector similarity alone, which misses exact terms and names. Kit for AI fuses dense vector search with keyword search using Reciprocal Rank Fusion, then reranks the shortlist with a cross-encoder — so the passage that actually answers the question lands first. Higher precision means fewer chunks in the prompt, and fewer tokens billed.
Grounded answers that cite — or decline
Every answer is generated only from your retrieved passages and cites the exact source. When your documents don't cover a question, the model says so instead of inventing an answer. No confident hallucinations, no untraceable claims.
Token-efficient ingestion
Sources aren't dumped in raw. PDFs, Office files, HTML, URLs and scanned images run through a conversion ladder — including vision-model OCR — into clean, structured Markdown. Clean input cuts token counts sharply versus raw extraction, and gives the model less noise to reason over.
Private by default
Answers run on our own models, so your documents and memories aren't sent to a third-party LLM. You get the retrieval quality without handing your corpus to OpenAI or Anthropic.
One surface, zero retrieval infra
Convert, knowledge bases, memory (remember/recall), web search and skills are one REST API, one MCP server, and a typed SDK. No vector database to run, no embedding pipeline to maintain, no chunking strategy to tune — it's managed end to end.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Kit for AI | Glean |
|---|---|---|
| Retrieval technique | Hybrid (vector + keyword) fused with RRF, then cross-encoder reranking | Vector similarity |
| Grounded, cited answers | Cites every source; declines when your docs don't cover it | Enterprise search results |
| Document → clean Markdown / JSON | PDF, Office, HTML, URLs, images/OCR — token-efficient | Connectors |
| AI OCR for scans & images | Vision-model OCR → structured Markdown | Via connectors |
| Retrieval infrastructure to run | None — no vector DB, embeddings or chunking to manage | Managed enterprise platform |
| Local / private AI (no third-party LLM) | Runs on our own models | Hosted |
| Developer surface | REST API + MCP server + typed SDK | Enterprise API |
| Agent memory (remember / recall) | Built-in, deduplicated, semantic | Not a memory API |
| All-in-one (convert → KB → memory → skills → search) | One platform, one API | Enterprise search |
| Starting price | Free tier · Pro $9/mo | Enterprise / per-seat |
Pricing
Glean is enterprise-priced (per-seat, annual, sales-led). Kit for AI starts free with a $9/mo Pro plan and no sales call.
FAQ
- Is Kit for AI a cheaper Glean alternative?
- For building an AI knowledge base over your documents, yes — it's self-serve and starts free (Pro $9/mo), with no per-seat enterprise contract or sales-led rollout. Glean is a broader company-wide search platform priced accordingly.
- What's the technical difference?
- Kit for AI retrieves with hybrid search (vector + keyword, RRF-fused) and cross-encoder reranking, then answers with citations from your own documents — exposed over a REST API and MCP for your apps and agents, not just an end-user search box.
- Do I need an enterprise rollout?
- No. Create a knowledge base, add documents, and query it via the app, API, or MCP in minutes — no procurement or per-seat licensing.
Switch to the all-in-one AI toolkit
Convert, build a knowledge base, remember, recall, run skills and search — one API, private models, from free.