Enterprise Search Tools Comparison (2026): The Best Enterprise Search Software for Buyers

TL;DR

• Our recommendation for 2026: Sentra when people and AI agents need what is true now, who owns it and what is going wrong, and a search tool such as Glean, Microsoft Search with Copilot or Gemini Enterprise when the job is finding a file. This comparison covers Sentra plus the nine search products buyers shortlist: Glean, Microsoft Search with Microsoft Copilot, Gemini Enterprise, Elastic, Coveo, Algolia, Lucidworks, Guru and GoSearch.
• Pick by the job. Glean, Microsoft and Gemini Enterprise search across workplace apps for employees. Elastic, Algolia, Coveo and Lucidworks are search engines and platforms you configure, mostly for websites, products and support. Guru and GoSearch suit mid-size teams that want curated answers or a lighter rollout.
• The four questions that separate them are permissions (do results follow each source's access rules), connectors (do they cover your real systems), deployment (whose cloud holds the index) and price model (per seat, per query or per compute hour).
• Sentra is not a search index. It works out what is true now from email, chat, meetings, documents and systems such as ERP, CRM and HRIS, and gives that to people and to every AI tool, including your search tool's assistant. Add it alongside search when the question is "what was decided and is it still true", not "where is the file". In the Glass Company, an independent test built and scored by Era by Eon, Sentra read a simulated 1,200-person company it had never seen and found 495 of the 497 problems hidden in it, in 102 minutes. Claude Opus, given the same systems, found 8%.

Best by use case

• Employees searching files across workplace apps: Glean, Microsoft Search with Copilot in a Microsoft 365 company, or Gemini Enterprise on Google Workspace.
• Search you build into a website, product or support portal: Elastic, Algolia, Coveo or Lucidworks.
• Verified answers for support and sales teams: Guru.
• A lighter workplace search rollout for a mid-size team: GoSearch.
• Knowing what is true now, who owns it and what is going wrong, for people and AI agents: Sentra, alongside any of the above.

What enterprise search tools do

Enterprise search tools index content from a company's apps and return results each employee is allowed to see, ranked by relevance, often with an AI answer written from the top results. An enterprise search tools comparison should therefore start with three things the index depends on: which sources it connects to, how it enforces each source's permissions, and where the index runs.

Two kinds of product share the label. Workplace search products, such as Glean, Microsoft Search and Gemini Enterprise, come with connectors and a ready search box for employees. Search platforms, such as Elastic, Algolia, Coveo and Lucidworks, are engines a team configures for a website, app, catalogue or support portal. Buying one when you needed the other is the most common mistake in this category.

Selection criteria for enterprise search software

Use these criteria in every vendor conversation.

1. Permissions. Results must follow each source's access rules, for people and for AI agents. Ask how permissions sync and what happens when a sync fails.

2. Connectors. Check the ten systems your teams actually use against the vendor's list. A custom connector is a project, not a checkbox.

3. Search approach. A ready product, or an engine your engineers assemble.

4. AI answers and agent access. Whether outside assistants and agents can call the same index through an API or MCP.

5. Deployment. Vendor cloud, your own cloud account, or self-managed.

6. Pricing model. Per seat, per query or per compute hour, modelled at full rollout.

7. Freshness. How fast changes reach results, and whether the tool can tell an outdated page from the current one.

Enterprise search tools comparison table

Each vendor's details were checked on its own site or documentation on 26 October 2026.

The enterprise search tools, reviewed

Sentra: organization memory alongside search

Sentra is the organization memory that works with whichever search tool you choose. It connects to email, chat, meetings, documents, ERP, CRM, HRIS and BI through more than 200 integrations, and works out what is true now: what was decided, who owns it, and when a fact stopped being true. People ask it questions in the app or in Slack, and ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Gemini and internal agents use the same memory over REST and MCP.

Sentra is not a replacement for a search index. If the job is finding a specific file, or powering search on your website or in your product, choose one of the search products below.

In the Glass Company, an independent test built and scored by Era by Eon, Sentra read a simulated 1,200-person company it had never seen and found 495 of the 497 problems hidden in it, in 102 minutes. Claude Opus, given the same systems, found 8%. A search box cannot do that, because nobody knew what to search for.

Glean

Glean is the best-known dedicated workplace search product. Its site describes connectors to work apps and data sources such as Slack, Google Drive, Jira, Confluence, SharePoint, GitHub and Salesforce, with "permission-aware access built in from day one" (glean.com). Glean runs in its own cloud or as a Customer Hosted deployment in the customer's GCP or AWS account, managed by Glean. Its MCP server exposes search, chat and document reading to clients such as Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor. Glean publishes no rate card; Metronome's pricing index estimates $45 to $50 per user per month for the base platform plus $15 for the Work AI add-on. Our Glean pricing guide works out the annual cost by seat count.

Glean's newer pricing model is Enterprise Flex, last updated by Glean on 2 November 2026. Each per-user seat includes unlimited Fast Mode queries and up to 100 Thinking Mode queries a week on standard models, plus a pooled allowance of FlexCredits at the organization level. Premium-model queries, agent runs, slide generation, meeting notes and Thinking queries past the weekly allowance draw on those credits, and more can be bought in FlexCredit Packs. Glean lists a typical agent run at about 7 FlexCredits at the median and 114 at the 90th percentile, and learned memories begin billing on 7 November 2026. Glean still publishes no dollar price per seat or per credit.

Limitations: no public pricing, and deployments are usually sized for larger companies. If cost or fit is the issue, see Glean alternatives.

Microsoft Search and Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft Search is on by default in Microsoft 365 and searches SharePoint, OneDrive and Exchange, showing users only results they already have access to (learn.microsoft.com). Copilot connectors bring in outside sources: Microsoft lists over 100 prebuilt connectors, including Salesforce, ServiceNow, Confluence and Jira, plus federated connectors that fetch live data over MCP without indexing it. Microsoft Copilot adds AI answers on top for $30 per user per month paid yearly, on top of a qualifying Microsoft 365 licence.

Limitations: sources outside Microsoft 365 depend on connector setup.

Gemini Enterprise

Google's Gemini Enterprise offers permission-aware enterprise search, prebuilt tasks and agent actions in every edition, according to its editions documentation. The Business edition covers 1 to 500 users; Standard and Plus have no upper limit, and access to the full connector ecosystem varies by edition.

Gemini Enterprise is where Google Agentspace went. Google's Agentspace announcement now carries an editor's note dated 9 October 2025: "Agentspace is now part of Gemini Enterprise" (blog.google). Buyers comparing Agentspace with Copilot or Glean are comparing Gemini Enterprise today.

Limitations: connector access varies by edition.

Elastic

Elastic is a search engine, not a finished workplace product. Elastic removed its standalone Workplace Search and App Search products in version 9.0 and points customers to Elasticsearch itself (elastic.co). Its connectors support document level security for sources such as Confluence, Google Drive, Jira, Salesforce and SharePoint Online, a feature still marked beta and not available on every subscription. Serverless pricing starts at $0.09 per VCU-hour for search and $0.14 for ingest (elastic.co).

Limitations: your engineers build and run the search experience.

Coveo

Coveo is a search and relevance platform used for service, website and workplace search. Its pricing page lists a unified index, native connectors, document-level security and refresh controls in the base plan, with generative AI features sold separately and workplace plans priced per seat. No dollar figures are published.

Limitations: pricing is sales-led and generative answering is an add-on.

Algolia

Algolia is a hosted search API for websites and apps. Its free tier includes 10,000 search requests a month, Grow charges $0.50 per additional 1,000 requests, and the Elevate plan for enterprise AI search is custom (algolia.com). Per-user access is something you build: Algolia's guide uses a visible_by attribute and a secured API key generated per user (algolia.com).

Limitations: not a workplace search product; no ready connectors to company apps with synced permissions.

Lucidworks

Lucidworks sells a search and discovery platform aimed mainly at commerce and digital experience teams, with Lucidworks AI, no-code Studios and an Agent Studio for Q&A agents. It offers SaaS, self-hosted and hybrid-SaaS deployment (lucidworks.com). Its documentation describes security trimming for permission-aware results.

Limitations: the platform is oriented to commerce search, and pricing is through a demo.

Guru

Guru is a verified knowledge layer with AI search. Its pricing page describes cited answers from Knowledge Agents, 100+ integrations with MCP delivery, verification workflows, SOC 2 Type II and permission-aware answers, sold as custom packages that include a solution engineering team.

Limitations: answers are strongest where knowledge has been written and verified; pricing is not public.

GoSearch

GoSearch offers search, AI chat, agents and workflows across 100+ connectors. Its pricing page lists a free plan, Pro at $20 per user per month, and an Enterprise plan with SSO, SCIM, audit logs, an API, and bring-your-own LLM and cloud. It states SOC 2 Type II certification and hosting on AWS.

Limitations: API access and advanced permissions sit on the Enterprise plan.

Other enterprise search tools worth knowing

These products also come up when buyers look for Glean, Copilot or Agentspace alternatives. Each was checked on the vendor's own site on 5 November 2026.

• Atlassian Rovo. Search and chat across Atlassian and connected SaaS apps such as Google Drive, Gmail, GitHub, Box and Dropbox, with agents for next steps (atlassian.com). Rovo credits are included in paid Jira and Confluence cloud subscriptions (support.atlassian.com). Best for Atlassian shops.
• Amazon Q Business. AWS's assistant and enterprise search over connected data, priced at $3 per user per month for Lite and $20 for Pro, plus index units billed hourly from $0.140 per unit (aws.amazon.com). AWS presents Amazon Quick Suite as its next evolution, and existing Q Business customers can keep using it. Best for AWS-centric companies.
• Dust. A platform for building AI agents over company data, with connectors to Slack, Notion, GitHub and Google Drive and US or EU data residency. Pro seats are 24 euros per month billed yearly, for teams of up to 100 on the Business plan, with Enterprise custom (dust.tt). Best for teams that want to build their own assistants on top of search.

AI collaboration platforms vs enterprise search

Buyers also meet these products under the label AI collaboration platform. The difference is the job. Enterprise search finds content across apps. An AI collaboration platform adds assistants and agents that summarize, draft and act inside the tools where teams work, usually on top of a search index. Glean, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini Enterprise and Rovo now sell both. What neither label covers is knowing which decision is current and who owns it, which is the layer Sentra adds. Our guide to AI collaboration platforms compares that category in detail.

When to add Sentra alongside search

Search answers "where is the document about X". It ranks what is closest to the query, and the reader decides whether that page is still current. That is the right tool for finding a policy, a deck or a spec. It is the wrong tool for a different set of questions that executives ask every week:

• What did we agree with this customer, and has it changed since?
• Who owns this initiative now, after the reorg?
• Why did gross margin move last month, and which supplier email or pricing call explains it?
• Which commitments made in last month's meetings are overdue?

These answers are spread across a meeting, a thread, a CRM record and an ERP figure, and the latest version often contradicts the wiki. Sentra handles this layer. It reads those sources as work happens, resolves them into facts with a source, an owner and a time range, and records when each fact stopped being true, so it serves the current answer and keeps the history. When something is going wrong, it works out who should act and tells them, and a named person approves anything Sentra raises before it reaches anyone else.

Sentra does not replace your search tool. The usual pattern is search for documents, Sentra for current decisions and commitments, with both available to the same assistants. Because Sentra exposes REST and MCP, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude or an internal agent can call it next to the search index. Every answer and action respects each source's existing permissions, and a failed permission check counts as no access. Sentra is SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certified, and runs in the cloud, in an isolated VPC or air-gapped on-prem.

The details are public. See how Sentra keeps company memory current, how it enforces permissions on every fact, how it raises problems before anyone asks and how Copilot, Gemini or any agent reaches it over MCP and the API.

Add Sentra alongside search when:

1. Your search pilot finds documents but people still ask colleagues what is current.

2. AI assistants give answers that contradict last week's decision.

3. The answer you need joins a system of record (ERP, CRM, HRIS) with what people said in email, chat and meetings.

4. You run agents from more than one vendor and want them to share one company memory.

To see how this works on your own systems, book a demo.

How to choose enterprise search software

Start with your company's platform and the job, then narrow.

• You live in Microsoft 365: start with Microsoft Search, which you already own, and add Microsoft Copilot and Copilot connectors for outside sources.
• You live in Google Workspace: evaluate Gemini Enterprise first.
• You have many apps across both and a large workforce: Glean is the reference product; compare its estimated cost against GoSearch and Guru using our Glean alternatives guide.
• You need search inside your product or website: Algolia, Coveo or Lucidworks.
• Your engineers want to own the stack: Elastic.
• Your hardest questions are about what was decided and what is true now: add Sentra next to whichever search tool you pick. For the difference in detail, see Sentra vs Glean and why RAG fails.

Test every finalist on twenty real questions, five permission edge cases (a private channel, a restricted HR folder, a departed employee's files) and a full-rollout cost model.

FAQ