The ultimate guide to choosing a Confluence AI assistant

If your team uses Confluence, you know it is a powerful and reliable platform for keeping project plans, meeting notes, and company policies in one place. As your company grows, Confluence becomes a rich repository of institutional knowledge. Because it is so effective at capturing information, finding one specific detail among thousands of pages can sometimes be a significant task.

That's the exact problem a Confluence AI assistant is designed to solve. These tools can turn your expansive wiki into a smart, conversational resource that gives you instant, accurate answers. Let's break down what these assistants are, look at the different types out there (from Atlassian’s own tools to other platforms), and cover the key features you should look for when choosing one for your team in 2026.

What is a Confluence AI assistant?

Think of a Confluence AI assistant as a smart search engine for your wiki, but one you can talk to. It’s an AI-powered tool that connects to your Confluence space to read, understand, and pull out information from all your documentation. Instead of you having to guess the right keywords to search for, you can just ask questions in plain English and get answers right away.

Here’s what it actually does for you:

• Lets you search like a human. You can ask complex questions like, "What is our policy on parental leave for employees in the UK?" instead of trying to guess keywords like "leave policy uk."

• Summarizes long documents instantly. The AI can give you the highlights of a long project plan or a dense meeting recap, which saves a ton of reading time.

• Gives you answers with sources. A good assistant doesn’t just give you an answer and expect you to trust it. It shows its work by linking back to the original Confluence page(s) it used, so you can easily double-check the information yourself.

These assistants use a technology called Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). All that means is the AI first finds the most relevant bits of information from your Confluence pages and then uses only that info to generate a precise, context-aware answer.

Types of Confluence AI assistants

As these tools have become more popular, you've got a few different options to consider. Each offers unique strengths depending on your team's needs.

Atlassian's native Confluence AI assistant: Atlassian Intelligence and Rovo

Atlassian has its own solution built right into its products. Atlassian Intelligence adds AI features directly inside Confluence for things like creating and summarizing content. This is all powered by Rovo, which Atlassian calls its "AI teammate" for handling search and chat across the platform.

A significant advantage here is that it's perfectly integrated. It already knows the structure of your Confluence spaces, pages, and user permissions. Its primary focus is to work seamlessly within the Atlassian ecosystem. Since many companies also keep important knowledge in other places, like Google Docs, Slack, and external helpdesks, some teams choose to use Rovo alongside other specialized tools.

Third-party marketplace apps

The Atlassian Marketplace has plenty of third-party apps that bring AI features to Confluence. They usually come in two flavors:

1. All-in-one solutions: These apps come with the AI model and the Confluence integration bundled together in one easy-to-install package.

2. "Bring Your Own Key" (BYOK) apps: These tools connect your Confluence data to an external AI service like OpenAI, giving you direct control over your API usage.

Marketplace apps offer specialized features that cater to unique team workflows, providing additional flexibility for teams with specific technical requirements.

External AI platforms

There’s a third route: using a standalone AI platform that connects to Confluence as just one of its many knowledge sources. These platforms are designed from the ground up to pull together knowledge from multiple places, complementing your Confluence setup.

This approach helps unify information. Instead of having an AI that only knows what’s in Confluence, you can create a single AI assistant that understands your documentation from Confluence, Google Drive, Notion, and your helpdesk all at once. Platforms like eesel AI are built specifically for this, helping you create one source of truth for your entire company.

Key features to look for in a Confluence AI assistant

Not all AI assistants are the same. Beyond just answering questions, a few key features can be the difference between a slightly better search bar and an AI partner that actually helps your team.

Connections to multiple knowledge sources

Your company's knowledge is often distributed across several platforms. While Confluence is a core hub, important info might also be in Google Docs, Notion, Slack threads, or Zendesk tickets. A Confluence AI assistant that can bridge these gaps ensures your team always gets the full picture.

The best tools have broad, one-click integrations that cover your whole tech stack. For instance, platforms like eesel AI let you connect Confluence, Google Docs, Notion, and even your helpdesk like Zendesk into one unified knowledge base.

Customization and control

To get the most out of an AI, you need to be able to control what it knows and how it acts. Here are a few things to look for:

• Scoped Knowledge: Can you easily tell the AI to only use specific Confluence spaces? For example, you might want an IT-support AI that only answers questions from the "IT Policies" space.

• Custom Prompts: You should be able to give the AI a personality and specific instructions, ensuring it matches your company's voice.

• Custom Actions: The most capable assistants can do more than just talk. Look for the ability to have them trigger actions, like creating a Jira ticket or flagging a question for a human expert in Slack.

The best platforms let you start small. You can begin with a narrow, well-defined scope (like a single Confluence space) and then slowly expand the AI's knowledge as your team gets comfortable with how it works.

Ease of setup

Your team is busy, and you want to see value quickly. Modern enterprise tools should be accessible without requiring long, mandatory implementation cycles.

Look for a platform with a self-serve model. You should be able to sign up, connect your Confluence account, and have a working AI assistant ready to test in minutes. Modern platforms like eesel AI are designed to be incredibly easy to set up yourself, putting you in control of the timeline.

Security and data privacy

This is a non-negotiable priority. When you connect an AI to your internal documentation, you need to know exactly how your data is being handled.

Look for platforms with clear, transparent data privacy policies. They should state plainly that your data won't be used to train general AI models. Make sure to check for things like end-to-end data encryption, SOC 2 compliance, and options for data residency.

Comparing Confluence AI assistant options: Atlassian Rovo vs. third-party assistants

So, how do you decide? Let's look at Atlassian's native tool alongside specialized third-party options.

Atlassian Rovo: Features, pricing, and considerations

Features: Rovo's main advantage is its deep connection to the Atlassian suite. It can search across Confluence, Jira, and other Atlassian products, using the "Teamwork Graph" to understand how projects and documents are related. It provides AI-powered search, chat, and content creation within the platform you already use.

Pricing: Rovo is available on the Standard, Premium, and Enterprise plans for Confluence Cloud. Atlassian uses a tiered plan structure to provide different levels of AI credits and indexed objects to match different team sizes.

Feature	Standard Plan	Premium Plan	Enterprise Plan
Atlassian Rovo	Included	Included	Included
AI Credits	25 per user/month	70 per user/month	150 per user/month
Indexed Objects	100 per user	250 per user	625 per user

Key considerations:

1. Ecosystem focus: Rovo is built to maximize the value of the Atlassian ecosystem. While it can connect to external apps, it is primarily optimized for a unified experience across Atlassian tools.

2. Customization: Rovo provides a solid, standardized experience. For teams that need highly specialized conversational flows or unique triggers, a third-party platform might offer more granular customization.

3. Plan-based limits: The credit system ensures balanced resource allocation. Teams with very high interaction volumes should plan their usage according to their specific tier.

The eesel AI alternative: Bringing all your knowledge together

If your team prioritizes multi-platform connectivity, a platform like eesel AI is a strong option. It works as a powerful addition to your Confluence setup, treating it as a key source of truth within a broader knowledge platform.

• Connect all your knowledge: With eesel AI, you can plug in Confluence alongside over 100 other tools like Slack, Google Docs, and Zendesk.

• Total control and a fast setup: You can get going in minutes, set up the AI's prompts yourself, and even simulate how it will perform before you launch it.

• Clear, predictable pricing: eesel AI offers straightforward plans based on interaction volume, so you always know what to expect.

Thinking beyond a simple Confluence AI assistant

Getting a Confluence AI assistant is a great first move toward unlocking the value buried in your documentation. But the real change happens when you have an AI that can access all of your company's knowledge, no matter where it's stored.

This video provides an introduction to Atlassian Intelligence, showing how its AI-powered features can assist with content creation and summarization directly within Confluence.

The choice comes down to your team's specific needs: a built-in tool that is highly convenient for Atlassian users, or a specialized platform that can bring your entire knowledge stack together. To truly knock down information silos, you can look for the setup that best fits your workflow.

Get started with a smarter Confluence AI assistant today

Ready to build an AI assistant that connects to Confluence and all your other essential tools? With eesel AI, you can create a single source of truth for your entire team.

You can get set up in minutes, connect over 100 sources with one-click integrations, and test your AI's performance before you go live. Stop digging for information and start getting answers.

Try eesel AI for free and see how easy it is to put your company's collective knowledge to work.