An AI coworker you actually own.
Glean and ZenSearch both connect your company's knowledge and run agents over it. The difference is control: ZenSearch deploys on your own infrastructure — on-prem or air-gapped — with your choice of LLM and a risk-tier approval on every action.
The Short Version
Choose ZenSearch if you need:
- True on-premise or air-gapped deployment with full infrastructure control
- Bring-your-own-LLM, including fully local models
- Fine-grained governance — risk tiers T0–T5 and cross-surface approvals
- Natural-language queries against your enterprise databases
- A single deployment you own, update, and audit on your schedule
Choose Glean if you need:
- 100+ pre-built connectors off the shelf today (vs ZenSearch's 18)
- An established brand with SOC 2 Type II already in hand
- A managed SaaS posture with no infrastructure to run
- An organization already standardized on Glean's ecosystem
Feature by Feature
ZenSearch vs Glean, in detail.
Agents & AI Capabilities
| Capability | ZenSearch | Glean |
|---|---|---|
Hybrid search (dense + sparse) | ||
Cross-encoder reranking | ||
Cited answers with sources | ||
AI agents with tool calling | ||
Approval-gated write actions Every consequential write pauses on a per-team policy and routes to the right human | Risk tiers T0–T5 | Basic controls |
Cross-surface approvals | Slack, email, web | |
Multi-agent delegation Agents hand subtasks to specialist agents on the same team, depth-limited and budget-clamped | ||
Automations (cron / email / event / meeting) | Limited | |
Self-improving procedural memory Successful multi-tool sessions distill into reusable playbooks future runs reuse | ||
NL-to-SQL database queries Query PostgreSQL, MySQL, ClickHouse, and SQL Server in natural language | ||
Answer confidence scoring | ||
Guardrails (hallucination, PII, injection) | Partial |
Deployment & Models
| Capability | ZenSearch | Glean |
|---|---|---|
Cloud (SaaS) | ||
True on-premise deployment Glean offers 'customer-hosted cloud' (managed by Glean in your VPC) — not true on-premise | ||
Air-gapped deployment | ||
Docker & Kubernetes | ||
Bring your own LLM OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, Groq, OpenRouter, Azure, Bedrock, Ollama, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint | ||
Single-tenant infrastructure | Enterprise only | |
Data residency control | Limited |
Data Connectors
| Capability | ZenSearch | Glean |
|---|---|---|
Confluence, Slack, GitHub, Jira | ||
Google Drive, SharePoint, Notion | ||
Salesforce, HubSpot | ||
SAP | ||
ServiceNow | ||
PostgreSQL / MySQL / SQL Server / ClickHouse NL-to-SQL with schema discovery, not file ingestion | ||
S3 / Azure Blob, Web Crawler | ||
Custom webhook & MCP tools | Limited | |
Total first-party connectors | 18 | 100+ |
Security & Compliance
| Capability | ZenSearch | Glean |
|---|---|---|
SOC 2 Type II | In progress | |
Document-level RBAC | ||
Permission-aware retrieval | ||
End-to-end encryption | ||
Audit logging with reasoning traces | Partial | |
HIPAA eligible | On-premise | Enterprise |
Prompt injection detection | ||
PII detection & filtering |
Where ZenSearch Stands Apart
Four gaps that matter at the enterprise.
Both platforms are capable. These are the places where ZenSearch is built differently — and where the difference shows up in procurement, security review, and the way your team actually works.
Runs on your infrastructure
ZenSearchDeploy with Docker or Kubernetes on your own hardware, in your VPC, or fully air-gapped. No vendor management plane, no operational access, no data leaving your network.
Runs on your infrastructure
GleanGlean's 'customer-hosted cloud' runs Glean's managed software inside your VPC — you don't control the deployment, and it needs connectivity to Glean's management plane. There is no true on-premise or air-gapped option.
Your models, not ours
ZenSearchEvery model call routes through a Model Gateway. Use OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, Groq, Azure, Bedrock — or run entirely on local Ollama / LM Studio, including in air-gapped environments.
Your models, not ours
GleanGlean runs on its own proprietary model stack with limited flexibility to swap in third-party or self-hosted models.
Governance on every action
ZenSearchEach tool carries a risk tier (T0–T5). Consequential writes pause the run and route an approval to the right human — in Slack, by email, or on the web — with full reasoning traces and audit logs.
Governance on every action
GleanGlean provides basic access controls but not fine-grained per-action risk tiers or cross-surface human approvals on agent writes.
NL-to-SQL over your databases
ZenSearchAsk questions in plain English against PostgreSQL, MySQL, ClickHouse, and SQL Server. Schema discovery, read-only execution, and query validation are built in.
NL-to-SQL over your databases
GleanGlean has no direct database querying — structured data must be ingested through file-based connectors or custom integrations.
A Closer Look
What "on-premise" actually means
Glean advertises customer-hosted deployment. Here's what that involves, side by side with ZenSearch's true on-premise install.
ZenSearch On-Premise
- Deploy with Docker and Kubernetes on any infrastructure
- Full control over compute, storage, and networking
- Air-gapped deployment — no internet connection required
- Bring your own LLM (Ollama, LM Studio, or any OpenAI-compatible API)
- You manage updates on your own schedule
- No vendor operational access to your infrastructure
- Data never leaves your network
Glean Customer-Hosted Cloud
- Deployed in your cloud VPC (AWS, GCP, Azure)
- Glean manages the software and infrastructure within your VPC
- Requires connectivity to Glean's management plane
- Uses Glean's proprietary AI models
- Updates managed by Glean on their schedule
- Glean retains operational access to the deployment
- Data stays in your VPC, but Glean has management access
Get Started
See the
difference.
Try ZenSearch in the live demo, or talk to our team about a deployment shaped to your environment.