Glean vs RetrieveIT: An Honest Comparison

Both Glean and RetrieveIT are cross-platform enterprise search tools that use semantic search to find documents across multiple SaaS applications. Both generate AI-powered answers with source citations. But they are built for different buyers. Here is an honest breakdown of where each platform wins.

Where Glean wins

• •Connector breadth: Glean connects to 100+ applications. If you need connectors to niche or legacy systems — Workday, ServiceNow, Zendesk, Salesforce, SAP — Glean likely has them. RetrieveIT currently supports 11 connectors covering the core platforms most teams use.
• •Enterprise scale: Glean has been deployed at organizations with thousands of employees. The platform is proven at scale with large document volumes and complex permission hierarchies.
• •Work AI automation: Glean's Work AI goes beyond search to automate workflows — creating documents, summarizing meetings, and assisting with tasks. RetrieveIT focuses on search and retrieval.

Where RetrieveIT wins

• •Transparent pricing: Published pricing starting at $30/seat/month. No sales call required. No surprise renewals. Glean does not publish pricing — buyers report $50+/user with annual escalators.
• •No minimum seats: Buy 5 seats or 500. Glean requires a 100-seat minimum, putting the floor at ~$60K/year.
• •Free trial: 14-day trial on your own data with no credit card. Glean POCs are paid and can cost up to $70K.
• •Self-serve signup: Connect your first data source and run a search within minutes. No procurement cycle. No IT deployment required.
• •MCP server: RetrieveIT provides an MCP server for AI agent integration — letting AI tools like Claude Code query your organization's knowledge directly. Glean does not offer this.
• •Per-query permission checks: RetrieveIT verifies permissions at the source system at query time. Both platforms are permission-aware, but the enforcement architecture differs.

Full comparison table

The bottom line

Choose Glean if you have 500+ employees, need connectors to niche systems RetrieveIT does not yet support, want workflow automation beyond search, and have a budget that supports $200K+ annually.

Choose RetrieveIT if you want to try before you buy, need search across the core platforms most teams use (Gmail, Drive, Confluence, SharePoint, Jira, GitHub), value transparent pricing, and do not want a 100-seat minimum or a procurement cycle to get started.