Glean AI pricing: A 2025 guide to its real costs & alternatives

So, you’re trying to figure out if Glean is the right AI tool for your team. You’ve heard good things, but you’ve probably hit a wall trying to answer the one question that really matters: "How much does this thing actually cost?"

You’re not the only one.

Glean is a seriously powerful enterprise search tool, but their complete lack of public pricing makes budgeting a real headache. It’s tough to build a business case when the price tag is a total mystery, especially for fast-moving support and IT teams who need clear answers, not a sales pitch.

In this guide, we’re going to pull back the curtain on the Glean AI pricing model, dig into the hidden costs you need to watch for, and show you a more transparent, self-serve alternative that puts you in control from day one.

What is Glean?

Before we get into the numbers, let’s clear something up. When you search for "Glean," you could be looking for one of two very different companies. It’s an easy mix-up.

• Glean.ai: This one is all about accounts payable and spend management software. It’s built for finance teams to track invoices and manage what the company is spending. A great tool for that job, but not the AI work assistant most folks are after.

• Glean (glean.com): This is the one we’re talking about today. It’s the enterprise search and "Work AI" platform designed to connect with all your company apps, like Slack, Google Drive, and Zendesk, to give your team a single, unified search bar and a smart AI assistant.

This Glean is meant to help employees find information buried in different apps, get summaries of long documents, and automate some of their work. It’s mostly aimed at big companies where information is scattered all over the place and nobody can find anything.

How the Glean AI pricing model works

Alright, let’s get to the tricky part. Glean doesn’t publish its prices, so figuring out the cost requires a bit of detective work. Based on what competitors are saying and what buyers have shared publicly, here’s the rundown of their model.

No public Glean AI pricing page

The first thing you’ll notice when you visit Glean’s website is that a pricing page is conspicuously missing. To get a quote, you have to book a demo and talk to their sales team.

Look, this is pretty common for big enterprise software that targets huge companies with custom needs. But that doesn’t make it any less frustrating. It means you get pulled into a long sales cycle with multiple calls and demos before you even know if Glean is in your budget’s ballpark. For teams that need to solve a problem now, this can be a huge blocker.

The Glean AI pricing per-user, per-month model with high minimums

Glean’s pricing is based on a per-seat license, which means you pay for every single employee who needs access to the tool.

According to reports from places like GoSearch and other user feedback, you can expect the price to start around $50 or more per user, per month. But the real kicker is the minimum contract size. The data points to a minimum annual contract value (ACV) of around $50,000 to $60,000. A little back-of-the-napkin math tells you that you need at least 100 users to even get in the door, which immediately prices out most small and mid-sized companies.

Key factors that influence your final Glean AI pricing quote

Since every Glean deal is custom, the final price you see will depend on a few things. When you get on that sales call, they’re going to ask you about:

• Company Size: This is the big one. The total number of employees you want on the platform will be the main driver of your cost.

• Number of Integrations: The more apps you need to plug into Glean, the more complex the setup gets, and you can bet that will be reflected in the price.

• Feature Set: Glean isn’t just one thing. It has a range of features, from basic universal search to its advanced "Work AI" suite. The specific tools you need will directly affect your quote.

• Support Tier: Like most enterprise software, the level of customer support you sign up for (standard vs. premium) will be another line item on the bill.

Hidden costs of Glean AI pricing

That per-user license fee? That’s just the start. When you’re dealing with software that has a totally opaque pricing model, you’ve got to keep an eye out for the hidden costs that can make your bill much bigger than you expected.

Mandatory support and implementation fees

Beyond the sticker price, you’re almost guaranteed to face extra fees that aren’t always discussed right away.

Here’s a little inside scoop from Vendr, a platform that tracks what companies are really paying for software. Their community insights show that "Glean support costs are 10% of ARR" and, more importantly, this "line item cannot be removed." So, if your contract is $80,000, that’s an extra $8,000 a year for support, whether you think you’ll use it or not. Onboarding and implementation can also come with their own service charges, adding even more to the total cost.

No free trial and an expensive proof-of-concept (POC)

Want to see if Glean will actually work with your company’s messy data? You can’t just sign up for a free trial. You have to go through the sales process, and even then, you might be asked to pay for a Proof of Concept (POC). Some reports say these paid POCs can run you up to $70,000. That’s a massive upfront investment just to see if the tool is the right fit.

This is where a more modern approach really shines. Instead of asking you to open your wallet just to kick the tires, a platform like eesel AI lets you test with total confidence. eesel AI offers a powerful simulation mode that you can run on thousands of your own historical support tickets before you ever go live. It’s a completely risk-free way to see exactly how the AI will perform and calculate your potential ROI, all without spending a dime.

A screenshot of the eesel AI simulation mode, which helps avoid the high hidden costs associated with Glean AI pricing by allowing free, data-backed testing.

Unpredictable renewal costs

And one last thing to keep in mind: what you pay in your first year might not be what you pay in your second. User feedback suggests that renewal price hikes of 7-12% are common with Glean. Unless you’re savvy enough to negotiate a renewal cap into your initial contract, you could be facing a surprise price increase that makes long-term budgeting a real challenge.

Why transparent pricing is critical for support and IT teams

This isn’t just about finding the cheapest tool. For Support and IT leaders, transparent pricing is about moving quickly, being agile, and making smart decisions without all the guesswork.

Opaque pricing creates some very real problems:

• You can’t budget what you can’t see. How are you supposed to build a business case for a new tool when you don’t even know the cost? Without clear, upfront pricing, calculating your return on investment is a shot in the dark.

• It kills widespread adoption. A high, rigid per-seat cost often means you have to limit licenses to a handful of "power users." This creates new information silos, which is the very problem a tool like Glean is supposed to fix in the first place. If your whole team can’t access the knowledge, the tool’s value plummetS.

• A slow ‘yes’ costs you money. A long sales cycle just to get a price means your team’s problems go unsolved for weeks or even months. When you’re drowning in support tickets or struggling with inefficient workflows, you need a solution that you can deploy now, not next quarter.

This is where a different philosophy makes all the difference. A platform like eesel AI is built for teams that value speed and control. With public pricing and a completely self-serve setup, you can go live in minutes, not months. You know the cost from the very beginning, so you can start solving problems right away without waiting for someone to send you a sales deck.

A better alternative to Glean AI pricing: How eesel AI’s pricing puts you in control

If Glean’s enterprise-first model feels too slow, too rigid, or just too expensive, there’s a much simpler way. eesel AI was designed to be powerful without all the complexity, and that starts with its pricing.

Transparent and predictable plans

First off, eesel AI has a public pricing page. You can see every plan, every feature, and every price without ever having to talk to a salesperson. It’s all right there.

A screenshot of eesel AI's public pricing page, a transparent alternative to the hidden Glean AI pricing model.

Our model is based on monthly AI interactions (think of an interaction as one AI reply or one AI action), not per-user seats. This is huge. It means you can give access to your entire team, and even your entire company, without your bill blowing up. We also have no per-resolution fees. You’ll never get a surprise bill after a busy month, because our pricing is designed to grow with you, not penalize you for being successful.

Radically self-serve and simple

With eesel AI, you can sign up, connect your knowledge sources, and set up your AI agent all by yourself. There are no mandatory demos or long-winded sales calls required.

Our one-click helpdesk integration lets you connect to platforms like Zendesk, Freshdesk, and Intercom in seconds. Unlike those complex enterprise setups that require a team of developers, eesel AI just slots right into the tools you already use, so you can start seeing value almost immediately.

A screenshot of the eesel AI integrations page, showing how it connects to different apps, a key factor in Glean AI pricing decisions.

A direct comparison to Glean AI pricing

The difference is pretty clear. Here’s a quick look at how Glean’s model stacks up against eesel AI’s straightforward, modern approach.

Feature	Glean	eesel AI
Public Pricing	❌ No	✅ Yes
Pricing Model	Per-user/month (with high minimums)	Based on AI interactions (no per-seat cost)
Free Trial	❌ No (paid POC may be required)	✅ Yes (with a free simulation on your own tickets)
Setup Time	Weeks or months (sales-led)	Minutes (self-serve)
Hidden Fees	Yes (mandatory 10% support fee, etc.)	No (Transparent, all-inclusive plans)
Flexibility	Rigid annual contracts	Flexible monthly or annual plans

This video explores the key factors to consider when deciding whether to build or buy an enterprise AI solution like Glean.

Beyond Glean AI pricing: Get started with an AI you can actually budget for

At the end of the day, Glean is a powerful tool built for massive enterprises with deep pockets and enough patience for a traditional, months-long sales and implementation cycle. For that specific audience, it can be a great fit.

But for most support and IT teams who need speed, transparency, and predictable costs, its opaque and expensive pricing model is a non-starter.

eesel AI offers a refreshing alternative. It’s built to be just as powerful but radically simpler, with a totally transparent pricing model that lets you start small, test with confidence, and scale without any nasty financial surprises. You’re in complete control from the very beginning.

See for yourself how easy it is. Start your free trial and run a simulation on your own data in minutes. Or, take a look at our clear, predictable plans on our pricing page.