Glean vs. StackAI

StackAI and Glean are AI platforms built for enterprise businesses, both designed to enhance productivity and address various business challenges. While they share similarities—such as serving similar types of organizations—they also have key differences.

StackAI is an all-in-one platform for building AI agents, offering a low-code/no-code interface with extensive flexibility. In contrast, Glean specializes in enterprise search and has more limited capabilities for creating custom AI applications.

In this blog, we’ll provide a detailed comparison of StackAI and Glean, covering aspects such as user interfaces, LLMs, security features, and more. By the end, you'll have a clearer understanding of which platform best suits your enterprise needs.

Side-by-Side Comparison: Stack AI vs. Glean

Stack AI & Glean: The Basics

Stack AI is a no-code platform that enables non-technical teams to build AI agents for various business use cases. With a drag-and-drop interface, teams can orchestrate AI applications powered by LLMs. Customers across industries like finance, education, and government use Stack AI to automate business processes.

Glean AI is an enterprise search and knowledge discovery platform that helps organizations quickly find and retrieve relevant information from workplace applications. By integrating with tools like Google Drive, Slack, Notion, and Salesforce, Glean provides a unified search experience, allowing employees to access necessary information without switching between platforms.

1. A Different Approach: Which Alternative Is Easier to Use?

1.1. StackAI: A Comprehensive Platform for AI Agents (Beyond Just Search)

StackAI offers a no-code/low-code platform for building AI-powered applications, including StackAI Chat, a feature similar to Glean.

Setting up a chat in StackAI is straightforward:

1. Navigate to the main dashboard and select “New Project.”
2. Choose “Quick Start.”
3. A chat interface appears instantly, with customization options on the right-hand side.

With StackAI, users have complete control over key elements, such as:

• Description – Define the chat’s purpose and context.
• AI Engine – Select from multiple AI models instead of being limited to one.
• Knowledge Base – Integrate your data sources for tailored responses.
• Tools & Agentic Actions – Activate specific functions, workflows, or automations.
• Conversation Starters – Customize prompts to guide user interactions.

For those seeking a customizable chat interface, StackAI is a strong alternative to Copilot Chat.

Setting up a knowledge base in StackAI is simple and flexible:

1. Select your cloud storage provider from the configuration tab.
2. Content is indexed for optimal retrieval using Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG).
3. Advanced parsing extracts data from images, charts, and tables to enhance AI-generated responses.

For advanced use cases, StackAI’s workflow builder enables users to design complex logic, integrating multiple LLMs and knowledge bases—ideal for automation and AI agent development.

StackAI also offers a library of templates, allowing users to find ready-made AI agents tailored to their industry.

1.2. Glean: A Search Engine for Company Insights

Glean is a knowledge search engine for organizations, featuring a ChatGPT-style interface where employees can ask questions and receive answers based on internal knowledge bases.

Glean allows users to create their own apps, which function as search engines tailored to specific departments or projects.

Users can attach specific knowledge and actions to enhance search results and enable notifications in Slack. However, customization is limited to naming and descriptions—the chat interface design is predefined.

2. Knowledge Retrieval: Which Alternative Is More Powerful?

2.1. StackAI: Combining Unstructured and Structured Data for AI Agents

With StackAI, creating a knowledge base is both straightforward and flexible:

• Select a cloud storage provider in the configuration tab.
• Content is indexed using Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) for optimized search and retrieval.
• Advanced parsing extracts information from images, charts, and tables, enhancing AI-generated responses.

Unlike Glean, StackAI integrates with structured data sources like Snowflake, MySQL, MongoDB, and Postgres, enabling text-to-SQL transformations. This flexibility allows users to combine unstructured data (e.g., documents in SharePoint) with structured data (e.g., databases).

2.2. Glean: Extensive Knowledge Base Integration with Limited Control Over Retrieval

Glean provides a wide range of data connectors, including Google Drive, Jira, and Asana.

When creating an app in Glean, users can select knowledge bases in a similar way to StackAI.

3. Custom Agents & Tools: Which Alternative Offers More Flexibility?

3.1. StackAI: A Platform Built Around Agentic Actions

StackAI allows users to:

• Choose from pre-built tools to expand AI capabilities.
• Create custom tools for specific tasks, like data transfers, automated emails, or real-time stock price retrieval.
• Define tool behavior to control AI actions effectively.

This customization enables workflow automation, seamless integrations, and precise action triggers. StackAI Chat is an ideal alternative to Copilot Chat for those needing custom AI agents.

3.2. Glean: Limited Actions with Minimal Customization

Glean provides only a few predefined actions, such as posting to Slack or conducting web searches. Custom tool creation is not available.

4. AI Model Flexibility: Which Alternative Offers More Variety?

StackAI is AI model-agnostic, allowing users to access various models, including OpenAI and Llama, with one click. Additional customization includes:

• Chart drafting for visual data representation.
• Citation rendering for sourced responses.
• PII protection and compliance safeguards.
• Custom guardrails to refine AI-generated content.
• Adjustable token limits for response optimization.

In contrast, Glean does not allow users to choose or configure the AI model used for response generation.

5. Security: How Do Stack AI and Glean Compare?

StackAI: Enterprise-Grade Security & Compliance

StackAI prioritizes security with features like:

• Comprehensive Audit Trails – Full transparency with execution logs.
• Citation Tracking – AI-generated responses include source references.
• Custom Workflows – Align AI actions with compliance policies.
• End-to-End Encryption – Secure data both in transit and at rest.
• Single Sign-On (SSO) – Enterprise-grade authentication.
• PII Protection – Compliance with GDPR and other regulations.
• SOC 2 Certification – Meets high security standards.

Glean: Enterprise-Grade Security with Limited Customization

Glean also adheres to strict security measures, including end-to-end encryption, SOC 2 Type II compliance, SSO, MFA, and audit logging. However, AI workflow customization is limited compared to StackAI.

StackAI: The Flexible Solution for Enterprise AI Teams

Both StackAI and Glean cater to enterprise teams, but StackAI offers greater flexibility for use cases beyond search. With its drag-and-drop interface, StackAI enables teams to build AI-driven automations tailored to their needs.

Glean focuses primarily on search engines for internal document retrieval, with limited customization options restricted to admins.

StackAI empowers users to build AI agents and deploy them across multiple interfaces—not just a ChatGPT-style UI.