Sentra vs Glean (2026): Enterprise Search vs Organizational Memory, Compared Fairly

TL;DR

• Sentra vs Glean is a choice between two jobs. Glean is an enterprise AI platform for search, an assistant and agents over 275+ connected apps, with permission-aware access. Sentra is the company's organization memory: it works out what is true now, what changed and who owns it, and raises problems before anyone asks.
• Glean is strong and broad. It mirrors source permissions at query time, indexes systems of record such as NetSuite and Workday, runs agents on triggers with a confirmation step before write actions, exposes agents over its own MCP server, and can run inside your AWS or GCP account.
• The gap Sentra fills is narrower and specific: facts that changed over time, records joined with what people said, findings raised to the right person with a named approver, and one shared company memory that any agent reads over MCP or REST. Glean's own memory is stored per user and is not shared across users.
• Most companies that already own Glean should keep it for search and add Sentra underneath for decisions, commitments and follow-through. Companies whose costly problems are about what is happening in the business, not where a document lives, can start with Sentra.

Sentra vs Glean: what each one is for

Sentra vs Glean comes down to one question: is your expensive problem finding information, or knowing what is currently true and acting on it? Glean answers the first. Sentra answers the second, and the two run well together.

Glean describes itself as "the Enterprise AI platform connected to your enterprise's data." Employees ask Glean Assistant a question and get an answer grounded in documents, tickets, chats and records they are allowed to see. Teams build Glean Agents to automate work over the same data.

Sentra understands how a company really runs and acts on it before anyone asks. It reads email, chat, meetings, documents, ERP, CRM, HRIS and BI, works out what is true now, why, and who is working on what, then finds what is going wrong and tells the person who should act. A named person approves anything Sentra raises before it reaches anyone else. Every person and AI tool that asks Sentra a question sees only what it is allowed to see.

Every Glean fact on this page was checked against glean.com and Glean's documentation on 27 October 2026.

What Glean does well, verified

Calling Glean "just search" undersells it. This is what Glean documents today.

• Connectors. Glean lists 275+ connected work apps and data sources (glean.com). They go beyond documents: the NetSuite connector indexes invoices, purchase orders and customer records (glean.com), and the Workday connector indexes people data and knowledge articles (docs.glean.com).
• Permissions. "Glean mirrors the access controls of every connected source system" and checks the signed-in user against them before returning results. It "never grants broader access than the source system provides" (docs.glean.com).
• Assistant and Agents. Agents can start from a chat message, a form, a schedule, or a content trigger that runs "when something changes in a connected tool" (docs.glean.com). Write actions in the Glean web app pause for the user's approval by default (docs.glean.com).
• MCP. Glean Agents can be exposed through Glean MCP servers to hosts such as Claude Desktop, Cursor and VS Code (docs.glean.com).
• Hosting. Glean Hosted runs in Glean's tenant on Google Cloud. Customer Hosted deploys Glean "as a managed service in isolation within your own cloud environment (GCP, AWS)" (docs.glean.com).
• Security. Glean lists SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, ISO 42001, HIPAA, GDPR and TX-RAMP Level 2 (glean.com).
• Pricing. Enterprise Flex seats are licensed per user per month. Fast Mode Assistant queries and agent creation are unlimited, while agent runs, premium models and learned memories draw on pooled FlexCredits. Learned memories are free through 6 November 2026 and billed from 7 November 2026 (docs.glean.com). Glean publishes no seat price; our Glean pricing guide puts the seat at about $60 to $65 per user per month by third-party estimate.

Sentra vs Glean compared

The table covers the dimensions where the two differ in kind. Connector counts and certifications are covered above.

The memory row comes from Glean's own documentation: "Glean stores memory data at the individual user level and does not share memory data across users" (docs.glean.com). That design is right for personalising an assistant. It is not a company record of what was decided.

The gap Sentra fills

Decisions and facts that changed over time

A launch date moves in a Tuesday meeting. The plan in the wiki still shows the old date. Search finds both, ranks them, and leaves the reader to decide which is current. An agent reading the results cannot tell an outdated page from a live one.

Sentra records when each fact became true and when it stopped being true. The old launch date is marked as superseded, with the meeting that replaced it as the source, so a person or an agent asking later gets the current date and its history. The same applies to prices, owners, policies and customer terms. See what a bi-temporal knowledge graph is for the mechanism.

Systems of record joined with conversations

Glean can search a NetSuite invoice and a Slack thread. The expensive question usually needs both at once: why margin dropped on one account, whether a supplier commitment made on a call matches the purchase order, which customer promise never reached the CRM.

Sentra connects email, chat, meetings, documents, ERP, CRM, HRIS and BI through 200+ integrations and joins what the records show with what people said. The answer is the current situation with its evidence, not a list of documents to reconcile by hand.

Proactive findings a named person approves

Glean agents do what someone designed them to do, triggered by a message, a schedule or a content change. That is useful automation, and it requires someone to know in advance which problem to watch for.

Sentra finds problems nobody configured a workflow for. It spots a commitment that has no owner any more, a number in a report that contradicts the system of record, or a stalled dependency between two teams, works out who should act and tells them. A named person approves before Sentra acts or sends anything. At Lenskart, time to root cause fell from 3 to 4 days to about 30 minutes.

One memory any agent reads over MCP and REST

Glean's MCP servers expose Glean agents to other hosts. Sentra's MCP and REST interfaces expose the company memory itself, so ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Gemini and internal agents read the same current facts, each limited to what the person it acts for can see. Adding an agent adds a reader, not another copy of the truth. Context also costs money: on Terminal-Bench 2.1, agents using Sentra scored 88.31% against an 83.37% baseline with 72.6% lower model cost and 41.2% fewer tokens.

Enterprise search vs organizational memory

Enterprise search finds the content that matches a question; organizational memory keeps a current record of what the company decided, promised and changed, and knows which version is true now. Search is organised around documents. Organizational memory is organised around facts, owners and time.

Most large companies need both. For the wider field, see our best enterprise search tools and what organizational memory is.

Agentspace vs Glean vs a company memory layer

Google Agentspace is now part of Gemini Enterprise. Google's release notes say the Agentspace experience "is referred to as Gemini Enterprise" (docs.cloud.google.com), and the Business edition starts at $21 per seat per month (cloud.google.com). So the real comparison is Gemini Enterprise, Glean and a company memory layer such as Sentra.

Both assistants remember things for the individual user: Glean stores memory per user (docs.glean.com), and Gemini Enterprise builds a personal memory for each user from past conversations and connected work apps (docs.cloud.google.com). Neither is a shared record of what the company decided.

Glean and Gemini Enterprise compete for the same budget: the search box and agent builder every employee uses. A memory layer does not compete for that slot. It sits underneath whichever one you choose, and underneath ChatGPT or Claude as well. Our Google Agentspace alternatives guide covers Gemini Enterprise in detail.

A company knowledge base for both employees and agents

A company knowledge base for both employees and agents needs three properties that a wiki or a search index does not guarantee. It has to know which version of a fact is current, because an agent cannot tell an old page from a live one. It has to enforce each source's permissions on every read, because an agent repeats whatever it can see. And people and agents have to read the same store, or they will give different answers to the same question.

Sentra meets all three, with employees in Slack and agents over MCP or REST reading one memory. Glean meets the permissions requirement well and serves employees well, but its memory is per user, not a shared record every agent reads. See AI knowledge base vs wiki and AI agent permissions.

When Glean is the better choice

Pick Glean, or keep it, in these cases.

• The core problem is findability. Thousands of employees lose time hunting for documents, tickets and records across dozens of apps. Glean's breadth of connectors and its ranking are built for that.
• You want one assistant and agent builder for every employee. Glean Assistant, Agents and its library of actions give a broad workforce one place to ask and automate, with per-seat licensing meant for the whole company.
• Your compliance list includes HIPAA, ISO 42001 or TX-RAMP. Glean lists all three.

Use both

For most companies that already run Glean, the right answer is both, each doing its own job.

1. Keep Glean as the search box and assistant for everyone. Employees keep asking where things are.

2. Add Sentra for the leaders, teams and agents who need what is true now. Sentra raises the stalled deal, the moved date and the missed commitment, with the evidence attached.

3. Point every agent at Sentra over MCP or REST. Glean agents, ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot and internal agents check the same current facts before they act.

4. Let permissions follow the source in both. Each product enforces the access rules of the source system, so neither widens what anyone can see.

Sentra replaces none of the company's systems. It is SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certified and deploys in the cloud, in an isolated VPC or air-gapped on-premises.

To see what Sentra would raise in your company alongside Glean, book a demo.

How to choose between Sentra and Glean

1. Write down your five most expensive recurring questions. If most start with "where is", price Glean or one of the Glean alternatives.

2. Mark the ones that depend on a fact that changed. Dates, prices, owners and customer terms move every week. Those need memory that records when a fact stopped being true.

3. Mark the ones that need records and conversations together. Margin, churn, stalled deals and supplier issues usually do. That is Sentra's job.

4. Count the agents you will run next year. If several teams' agents must agree on the same facts, you need one shared memory, not per-user memory inside each tool.

5. Test both on your own data. Run the same questions through each and measure time to a correct, cited, current answer.

FAQ