Glean is probably the best-known answer to "AI search across everything our company knows." It indexes 100+ tools into a permission-aware knowledge graph, its assistant answers from that index, and its agents can take real actions. For a 500-person company, it's a strong product.
For a 5-person company, it's not even a possible product. Glean doesn't publish pricing, sells only through demos, and buyer reports consistently describe contracts starting around 100 seats. If you've hit that wall, this article is the map of what's actually available to a small team — including where each option quietly stores its limits.
What "a Glean alternative" needs to do
Strip the category to its essentials and a small team needs four things:
- Connect to where knowledge already lives (docs, Slack, email, CRM, code).
- Answer questions from that knowledge, with current facts, not stale ones.
- Stay open — your knowledge should be reachable from the AI tools you already use, not locked inside one vendor's assistant.
- Be buyable — self-serve, no seat minimums, no discovery calls.
That fourth one disqualifies Glean for this audience by itself. The third one disqualifies more tools than you'd expect.
The real options
Guru — the verified knowledge base
Guru pairs a knowledge base (Cards) with a human verification workflow — experts attest that content is still true — and layers AI search over Cards plus connected sources like Slack, Drive, and Salesforce. That verification loop is genuinely good for keeping answers trustworthy, and Guru ships a remote MCP server so external AI tools can query it.
The catch for small teams: Guru pulled public pricing in 2026 — even the entry tier now routes through a sales conversation, with the previously published self-serve plan reported around $25/seat with a 10-seat minimum. And reporting suggests the best AI features (Knowledge Agents, MCP) sit in the sales-led enterprise tier. Verification also assumes someone maintains the Cards — a real ongoing cost when you're five people.
Onyx — the open-source route
Onyx (formerly Danswer) is open-source enterprise search and RAG chat: 50+ connectors, custom agents with actions, bring-your-own-LLM. Self-hosting the MIT community edition is free, cloud is $20/user/mo, there are no seat minimums, and it ships a built-in MCP server — the openness criterion, fully met.
The catch: self-hosting is real ops work — Docker or Kubernetes, a database, an index, model configuration, upgrades. That's a part-time DevOps tax, plus you supply and pay for the LLM keys. Great if you have an engineer who wants to own it; a distraction if you don't.
Notion AI — search where your wiki lives
If Notion is already your wiki, Notion's Business plan ($20/member/mo, billed annually) bundles AI search across your workspace and a modest set of connected apps (Slack, Drive, Jira, GitHub, and a handful more). Fully self-serve, no minimums — the lowest-friction entry on this list.
The catch: the search is bounded by Notion adoption, the connector catalog is roughly a tenth of Glean's, and — the subtle one — Notion's MCP server and API expose Notion pages only. The cross-app knowledge its AI search reaches through connectors stays inside Notion's own assistant. Your Claude or Cursor session can read your Notion docs, but not that aggregated index.
Agently — the company brain your AI tools share
Agently approaches the category from a different premise: instead of a search box inside one more app, it builds a company brain — a temporal knowledge graph assembled continuously from uploads and 25+ connected sources (Slack, Gmail, HubSpot, Linear, GitHub, Notion, and more) — and makes it available everywhere:
-
Inside Agently, where Jarvis and its agents use the brain to actually do work — draft the outreach, prep the call, update the CRM — with your approval. Answering questions is the floor, not the ceiling.
-
Outside Agently, through the MCP server at
api.agently.dev/mcp: Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, and VS Code query the same brain with workspace-scoped keys or OAuth. Your knowledge is deliberately not locked inside our assistant.
Facts in the brain carry temporal validity — when your pricing changes, agents can tell current truth from superseded history, which a plain search index can't. And it's self-serve from $29/mo, with no seat minimums and no demo call.
The catch, honestly stated: Agently isn't trying to be Glean. There's no 100-connector permission-mirrored index for a 1,000-person org, and search quality depends on what you've connected and curated. It's built for teams that want shared, current company context powering both their AI tools and real work — at a size where Glean won't return your call.
Side by side
| Buyable by a 5-person team? | Pricing | Open to external AI tools (MCP) | Acts on knowledge? | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Glean | No — sales-only, ~100-seat reported floor | Not published | Yes, usage-billed | Yes, 85+ actions |
| Guru | Barely — sales call, reported 10-seat min | Not published | Yes (reportedly enterprise-gated) | Answers only |
| Onyx | Yes | Free self-host / $20 per user/mo cloud | Yes, built-in | Yes, DIY wiring |
| Notion AI | Yes | $20 per member/mo (annual) | Notion content only | Within Notion |
| Agently | Yes | From $29/mo | Yes, all plans | Yes, via Jarvis + approval |
Pricing as of August 2026; sales-gated figures are buyer-reported.
How to choose
Have a DevOps-inclined engineer and want free + full control? Onyx self-hosted is the strongest pure-search value on the list.
Already live in Notion and just need workspace search? Notion Business is the shortest path — accept that the knowledge stays in Notion.
Support or ops team that needs verified, trustworthy answers? Guru's verification workflow is the differentiator — go in ready for the sales conversation.
Want one current company brain behind both your AI tools and actual execution? That's Agently — knowledge that doesn't just get found, but gets used.