2.5M+ pages · 6 languages
Multilingual EU-law research over 2.5M+ pages, answers in 6 EU languages with full source citations, 100–200 ms retrieval.
Source: LexEU
Glean alternative that runs on your own infrastructure — open source
Glean is a cloud-only enterprise search and assistant product sold per seat with contract minimums; it suits large organisations that accept SaaS processing of their content. DocsGPT is an MIT-licensed alternative that can run in the cloud, on your own servers or fully air-gapped, with your choice of model and no per-seat licence on self-hosted deployments.
Last updated: · Facts checked on
Glean and DocsGPT at a glance
Licence, hosting, models, price, contract and data access, side by side.
Glean is a proprietary, cloud-only product with no true on-premises option, a vendor-operated model hub, unpublished pricing reported at ~$50–75 per user per month and contract minimums of about 100 seats. DocsGPT is MIT-licensed, runs in four postures including air-gapped, supports any model including local engines, publishes its Cloud price and has no seat minimum.
| Glean | DocsGPT | |
|---|---|---|
| Open-source licence | Proprietary1 | MIT (platform and CLI)2 |
| Self-host and air-gap | No true on-premises; no air-gapped mode1 | Yes — Self-hosted (community), On-premises and Air-gapped (zero external egress), from one seat2 |
| Model choice / BYOM | Model hub, vendor-operated1 | Any cloud provider or local engine (Ollama, vLLM, llama.cpp and others); BYOM2 |
| Transparent pricing | Not published; ~$50–75/user/month reported1 | Yes, per posture: Cloud $20/seat/month; Managed from $2,000/month, flat; On-premises and Air-gapped from $10,000, one-time or recurring2 |
| Seat minimum / contract | ~100 seats reported1 | None; self-hosting has no licence fee2 |
| Vendor access to data | Yes — Glean's service indexes and processes content1 | Yes on Cloud and Managed — Arc53 operates both, Managed as a dedicated instance in your region; No on On-premises and Air-gapped, which you operate2 |
¹ Glean facts checked on . ·² Sources: docs.docsgpt.cloud and the public repository.
Where Glean is the better fit
- A large, SaaS-first estate with many managed connectors to keep in sync.
- You want a single vendor to run indexing, models and the application.
- There is no on-premises or data-residency requirement.
- Headcount is well above the contract minimum and per-seat budgeting is established.
Where DocsGPT is the better fit
- Content cannot leave the network: On-premises or Air-gapped posture.
- Models are your own — a cloud provider key or local engines such as Ollama and vLLM.
- The team is under 100 seats, or grows without a per-seat licence step.
- The work goes beyond search: agent workflows, document classification and OCR over scanned PDFs.
- Governance you hold: connector credentials encrypted on your server, admins choosing which connectors are enabled and whether they can write, roles, SCIM, usage quotas per person and an audit log exported as CSV or NDJSON.
- Breadth without a catalogue race: built-in connectors for Google Drive, SharePoint, Confluence, GitHub and S3, one-click Notion, Jira and Linear, and any MCP server or OpenAPI spec as a custom connection.
- Cost should be flat infrastructure plus support rather than scaling with headcount.
docsgpt — chat
5,000+ documents · flat monthly fee
Dedicated managed instance for a specialist consultancy: 5,000+ documents, SSO, one flat monthly fee with no per-seat licence.
Source: No Deviation
Cost at 100 and 1,000 seats
The band uses the reported $50–75 per user per month. DocsGPT Cloud is per seat; Managed and On-premises are flat per deployment, from the published starting prices.
| Glean | DocsGPT | |
|---|---|---|
| 100 seats, per year | $60,000–90,000/yr | Cloud $24,000/yr · Managed from $24,000/yr · On-premises from $10,000, one-time or recurring |
| 1,000 seats, per year | $600,000–900,000/yr | Cloud $240,000/yr · Managed from $24,000/yr · On-premises from $10,000, one-time or recurring |
| Basis | reported $50–75/user/month × seats × 12 | Cloud $20/seat/month × seats × 12 · Managed from $2,000/month, flat · On-premises and Air-gapped from $10,000, one-time or recurring, plus your infrastructure |
Before negotiation; add-ons excluded; checked on 2026-09-06.
Annual cost vs seatsreported prices · 2026-09-06
Text version
At 100 seats Glean costs $60,000–90,000 per year at the reported $50–75 per user per month; at 1,000 seats, $600,000–900,000. DocsGPT Cloud at $20 per seat per month costs $24,000 per year at 100 seats and $240,000 at 1,000; a Managed instance is flat from $24,000 per year at any seat count; On-premises and Air-gapped start from $10,000, one-time or recurring, plus your own infrastructure. Facts checked on 2026-09-06.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Glean's biggest competitor?
- The products most often compared with Glean are Microsoft 365 Copilot and ChatGPT Enterprise among hosted assistants, and open-source platforms such as Onyx and DocsGPT among self-hostable ones. Which is the closest fit depends on the estate, the deployment posture and the pricing model rather than a ranking.
Is there a free version of Glean?
- Glean has no free tier (checked 2026-09-06); it is sold per seat with contract minimums. DocsGPT is free to self-host under the MIT licence, and the Cloud plan is $20/seat/month.
Does Glean offer on-premise deployment?
- Glean has no true on-premises deployment (checked 2026-09-06); it runs as a cloud service. DocsGPT runs on-premises and air-gapped from one seat.
Is Glean like Copilot?
- Both are hosted, per-seat assistants that index company content and are operated by the vendor. Glean spans many SaaS sources and is sold with contract minimums; Copilot is tied to Microsoft 365 and priced at $30/user/month list. Neither has an on-premises or air-gapped mode (checked 2026-09-06). See DocsGPT vs Microsoft 365 Copilot and DocsGPT vs Glean.
How much does Glean cost per user?
- Glean does not publish pricing. Public reporting puts it at about $50–75 per user per month with minimums of roughly 100 seats (checked 2026-09-06). At 100 seats that is $60,000–90,000 a year before negotiation.
Alex Tushynski
Co-Founder, Arc53
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See DocsGPT on your documents
A 30-minute demo on your use case, or a free on-premises review with an engineer.