A comparison

Glean vs. Claude Enterprise

Glean gives enterprises a more complete solution than Claude — secure, governed, and not tied to a single model.

Enterprise context

Deeply indexes 100+ enterprise apps into a single knowledge graph built on 60+ enterprise signals, so your team works from a complete view of the organization and can connect dots across it.

Relies primarily on MCP connectors without a persistent enterprise index, so the AI is reactive and unable to anticipate needs across your organization.

Provides a unified platform for building agents across your entire tech stack, so you’re not stuck managing a fragmented mix of point solutions.

Cowork is highly capable for automating file-focused tasks, but desktop-bound, which limits workflows that span systems or require cross-functional collaboration.

Security and governance

Enforces permissions at retrieval time before models touch the data, so sensitive data is never exposed to unauthorized users.

Uses OAuth, so enforcement may be data-source-level rather than object/record-level.

Single-tenant deployment by default; supports SaaS and VPC deployments, giving your security team full control over where data lives.

Locked into multi-tenant SaaS deployments, creating compliance risk for regulated industries and eliminating any possibility of VPC hosting.

Governed platform with centralized audit logs and compliance controls, so IT and legal have the visibility they need without chasing down shadow IT.

Cowork activity is excluded from audit logs and compliance APIs, making it harder to meet enterprise governance requirements.

Openness and flexibility

Offers model flexibility across Claude, GPT, and Gemini, so you’re never forced to migrate when a better model becomes available.

Locked into Anthropic models, limiting options as the AI landscape evolves.

Enterprise context

Deeply indexes 100+ enterprise apps into a single knowledge graph built on 60+ enterprise signals, so your team works from a complete view of the organization and can connect dots across it.

Relies primarily on MCP connectors without a persistent enterprise index, so the AI is reactive and unable to anticipate needs across your organization.

Provides a unified platform for building agents across your entire tech stack, so you’re not stuck managing a fragmented mix of point solutions.

Cowork is highly capable for automating file-focused tasks, but desktop-bound, which limits workflows that span systems or require cross-functional collaboration.

Security and governance

Enforces permissions at retrieval time before models touch the data, so sensitive data is never exposed to unauthorized users.

Uses OAuth, so enforcement may be data-source-level rather than object/record-level.

Single-tenant deployment by default; supports SaaS and VPC deployments, giving your security team full control over where data lives.

Locked into multi-tenant SaaS deployments, creating compliance risk for regulated industries and eliminating any possibility of VPC hosting.

Governed platform with centralized audit logs and compliance controls, so IT and legal have the visibility they need without chasing down shadow IT.

Cowork activity is excluded from audit logs and compliance APIs, making it harder to meet enterprise governance requirements.

Openness and flexibility

Offers model flexibility across Claude, GPT, and Gemini, so you’re never forced to migrate when a better model becomes available.

Locked into Anthropic models, limiting options as the AI landscape evolves.

1.6x

Glean results are preferred 1.6x more than Claude for correctness and completeness.

What sets Glean apart

A governed context for your enterprise

Complete enterprise context

Glean maintains a deep enterprise index and knowledge graph that map relationships across people, content, and activity, helping teams find answers and get work done.

Enterprise-grade security

Glean provides single-tenant isolation, centralized audit logs, real-time permission enforcement, and built-in sensitive content protections to automatically identify and remediate sensitive data exposure.

Open and flexible

Glean offers long-term flexibility with multi-model orchestration across 35+ LLMs, so you can avoid provider lock-in and adapt as the AI landscape evolves.

Complete enterprise context

Connectors and actions

Glean

Turnkey, deeply indexed connectors for 100+ systems out of the box.

Real-time data sync across all your documents.

Natural-language action invocation and personalized, cross-source synthesis helps users understand and act across complex systems.

Claude

Relies on federated search and MCP connectors at query time.

Connectors inherit the user's OAuth but operate as fragmented silos.

Often relies on reading large volumes of raw content to find answers.

Turnkey, deeply indexed connectors for 100+ systems out of the box.

Relies on federated search and MCP connectors at query time.

Real-time data sync across all your documents.

Connectors inherit the user's OAuth but operate as fragmented silos.

Natural-language action invocation and personalized, cross-source synthesis helps users understand and act across complex systems.

Often relies on reading large volumes of raw content to find answers.

Search indexes and knowledge graphs

Glean

Built on a fully managed, persistent index that feeds an enterprise knowledge graph.

Maps 60+ signals, including view activity, org charts, and relationships.

Supports both Enterprise Graph and Personal Graph.

Claude

Executes searches independently across APIs, which can lead to inconsistent speeds.

Uses simple, rule-based ranking that often misses inherent relationships.

Built on a fully managed, persistent index that feeds an enterprise knowledge graph.

Executes searches independently across APIs, which can lead to inconsistent speeds.

Maps 60+ signals, including view activity, org charts, and relationships.

Uses simple, rule-based ranking that often misses inherent relationships.

Supports both Enterprise Graph and Personal Graph.

Personalization

Glean

Builds a Personal Graph for every user, learning your tasks, projects, collaborators, priorities, and even communication style.

Combined with Enterprise Graph, so personalization is based not only on chat history, but on real relationships across people, content, workflows, and applications.

Claude

Personalizes through conversation history, saved memory and preferences, and project-level instructions.

.md files and auto memory carry forward rules, preferences, and patterns across sessions.

Builds a Personal Graph for every user, learning your tasks, projects, collaborators, priorities, and even communication style.

Personalizes through conversation history, saved memory and preferences, and project-level instructions.

Combined with Enterprise Graph, so personalization is based not only on chat history, but on real relationships across people, content, workflows, and applications.

.md files and auto memory carry forward rules, preferences, and patterns across sessions.

Enterprise-grade security

Auditability & compliance

Glean

Full auditability ensures alignment with enterprise logging and compliance requirements.

Operates securely within your organization's compliance framework.

Suitable for HIPAA-regulated workflows.

Claude

For Claude Cowork:

Activity is currently excluded from audit logs and compliance APIs.

Conversation history is stored locally on user devices.

Not currently suitable for regulated workloads like HIPAA.

For Claude Cowork:

Full auditability ensures alignment with enterprise logging and compliance requirements.

Activity is currently excluded from audit logs and compliance APIs.

Operates securely within your organization's compliance framework.

Conversation history is stored locally on user devices.

Suitable for HIPAA-regulated workflows.

Not currently suitable for regulated workloads like HIPAA.

Deployment & hosting

Glean

Single-tenant SaaS

Hosting available in AWS, Azure, or GCP.

Designed to meet data residency requirements.

Claude

Limited to centralized Anthropic SaaS deployment; Claude Cowork runs locally.

No option for customer-managed VPC hosting.

Single-tenant SaaS

Limited to centralized Anthropic SaaS deployment; Claude Cowork runs locally.

Hosting available in AWS, Azure, or GCP.

No option for customer-managed VPC hosting.

Designed to meet data residency requirements.

Permissions enforcement

Glean

Inherits and enforces data permissions from the source systems.

Can detect accidentally overshared data, auto-hides it in Glean, and includes triaging and integrations for end-to-end remediation.

Claude

Relies on underlying connected apps to enforce permissions via OAuth.

No native sensitive data protection functionality.

Inherits and enforces data permissions from the source systems.

Relies on underlying connected apps to enforce permissions via OAuth.

Can detect accidentally overshared data, auto-hides it in Glean, and includes triaging and integrations for end-to-end remediation.

No native sensitive data protection functionality.

Agent control

Glean

Agent Sandbox isolates the file system, without ever touching your machine.

Fine-grained access controls over actions and agents.

Guardrails for prompt injection, malicious code, and toxic content.

Policy enforcement for acceptable use and added runtime checks on agents ensure actions are aligned with user intent (beta).

Claude

Cowork runs on your machine, giving the agent the same access to read, modify, and delete files.

High impact blast radius if a prompt injection triggers a destructive action.

No native organization-level policy enforcement for acceptable use or added runtime checks on agents to ensure actions align with user intent.

Agent Sandbox isolates the file system, without ever touching your machine.

Cowork runs on your machine, giving the agent the same access to read, modify, and delete files.

Fine-grained access controls over actions and agents.

High impact blast radius if a prompt injection triggers a destructive action.

Guardrails for prompt injection, malicious code, and toxic content.

No native organization-level policy enforcement for acceptable use or added runtime checks on agents to ensure actions align with user intent.

Policy enforcement for acceptable use and added runtime checks on agents ensure actions are aligned with user intent (beta).

Open and flexible

Model Choice

Glean

Access to 35+ models, including Claude Sonnet 4.6, GPT-5.x, Gemini, and more.

Model-agnostic platform avoids vendor lock-in.

Day 0 support lets you use models the same day they launch.

Seamlessly upgrade to newer models without rebuilding your context layer.

Claude

Locks customers into Anthropic's proprietary models.

No native access to alternative models for specialized tasks like image generation.

Prevents some employees from using their preferred models, limiting flexibility and productivity.

Access to 35+ models, including Claude Sonnet 4.6, GPT-5.x, Gemini, and more.

Locks customers into Anthropic's proprietary models.

Model-agnostic platform avoids vendor lock-in.

No native access to alternative models for specialized tasks like image generation.

Day 0 support lets you use models the same day they launch.

Prevents some employees from using their preferred models, limiting flexibility and productivity.

Seamlessly upgrade to newer models without rebuilding your context layer.

Openness by design

Glean

Adopts the latest AI innovations, whether from Anthropic, or other ecosystem partners.

Cloud-agnostic infrastructure with deployment on AWS, GCP, or Azure.

Integrates with your existing security stack, including Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Tines, BigID and more.

Acts as a strategic partner to future-proof your stack as the AI landscape continues to evolve.

Claude

Locked into Anthropic innovations, with no ability to adopt third-party models as they emerge.

Tied to Anthropic’s cloud infrastructure and multi-tenant deployments.

Limited security integrations without any native support for enterprise security partners.

Primarily a model research lab expanding into consumer and developer agents.

Adopts the latest AI innovations, whether from Anthropic, or other ecosystem partners.

Locked into Anthropic innovations, with no ability to adopt third-party models as they emerge.

Cloud-agnostic infrastructure with deployment on AWS, GCP, or Azure.

Tied to Anthropic’s cloud infrastructure and multi-tenant deployments.

Integrates with your existing security stack, including Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Tines, BigID and more.

Limited security integrations.

Acts as a strategic partner to future-proof your stack as the AI landscape continues to evolve.

Primarily a model research lab expanding into consumer and developer agents.

“We looked at frankly all of the major players in the space and Glean just blew them away from a user experience standpoint. Now we're in production across thousands of users at Dell. We're saving hours a week per person. The results have just been tremendous.”

View other case studies

Sam Grocott

SVP PMM and AI

Join world leading enterprises who put AI to work with Glean.

Get a demo

FAQs

Is Claude Cowork secure for enterprise use?

Claude Cowork is a desktop-bound agent, with workflows tied to individual machines rather than centrally governed systems, and a cloud sandbox. Its activity is not captured in enterprise audit logs, the compliance API, or data exports, and it is not eligible for HIPAA-regulated workloads. Glean, by contrast, provides a centrally managed platform where every agent action runs through role-based permissions and robust audit logging, giving security and compliance teams full visibility.

What is the main difference between Glean and Claude Enterprise?

Glean is a governed work AI platform built on a persistent enterprise knowledge graph that maps people, permissions, and activity across 100+ systems. Claude, by contrast, is a model-first offering, with work capabilities layered on through orchestration frameworks and federated MCP connectors that access external tools.

While both Glean and Claude support AI-driven task execution, Glean stands out with its unified, continuously updated enterprise knowledge graph that powers more accurate, context-aware actions across the organization.

How do governance, auditability, and permissions differ between Glean and Claude Enterprise in regulated or security-sensitive environments?

The key difference is that Glean is designed as a centrally governed enterprise AI platform, while Claude Enterprise is primarily a model-centric offering whose governance becomes less unified when work extends into Cowork. Glean enforces source-system permissions at retrieval time, builds a centralized permissions-aware index across connected systems, and gives security teams auditability across queries, actions, agents, and administrative activity.

That distinction matters even more in regulated or security-sensitive environments. Cowork activity is not captured in audit logs, compliance APIs, or data exports, and Anthropic flags Cowork as inappropriate for some regulated workloads, including HIPAA related work.

Can I use Anthropic models with Glean?

Yes, Glean is model-agnostic and provides the enterprise context your tools need. Through Glean’s Model Hub, you can use Anthropic’s latest Claude models, alongside OpenAI and Gemini, all grounded in Glean's secure enterprise index. Additionally, the context in Glean can be made available in other chat surfaces through MCP, meaning your users can access centralized context through Claude or Claude Code.

Does Glean integrate with Claude?

Yes, Glean supports the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and has a remote MCP server. This allows users to access Glean search and enterprise agents directly within the Claude interface while maintaining security controls.