Glean vs Portkey (2026): Pricing, Features & Verdict
Portkey is our pick, scoring 7.8/10 against 7/10 for Glean on our AI Software criteria. Its biggest advantage: higher Cost score (7/10 vs 2/10). Only Portkey has a free plan.
Last updated: November 2026
Glean
7/10
Glean is an enterprise work AI platform that searches company apps with permission controls, answers questions with citations, and runs agents for large organizations.
Portkey
7.8/10
Portkey is an AI gateway and LLMOps control plane that routes, monitors, and governs requests to 1,600+ LLMs for engineering teams and enterprises.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
| Feature | | |
|---|---|---|
| Scores | ||
| Overall Rating | 7/10 | 7.8/10 |
| Integration | 10/10 | 9/10 |
| Analytics | 6/10 | 9/10 |
| Customization | 7/10 | 7/10 |
| Ease of Use | 7/10 | 8/10 |
| Support | 6/10 | 6/10 |
| Cost | 2/10 | 7/10 |
| Scalability | 9/10 | 8/10 |
| Security | 9/10 | 8/10 |
| Output Quality | 8/10 | Not listed |
| Pricing | ||
| Free plan | No | Yes |
| Cheapest paid plan | Contact for pricing | $49/mo Production |
| Estimated cost for 10 users | Contact for pricing | Free Open Source |
| Features | ||
| AI Agents | Not listed | |
| API Access | Not listed | |
| Chatbots | Not listed | |
| Enterprise Controls | Not listed | |
| Knowledge Base Search | Not listed | |
| Text Generation | Not listed | |
| Workflow Automation | Not listed | |
| More features | ||
| API and CLI | Not listed | |
| Managed WordPress | Not listed | |
| Object Storage | Not listed | |
| Uptime SLA | Not listed | |
| Dedicated Servers | Not listed | |
| VPS Hosting | Not listed | |
| Shared Hosting | Not listed | |
Glean vs Portkey cost by team size
| Team size | Glean | Portkey |
|---|---|---|
| 1 user | Contact for pricing | FreeOpen Source |
| 5 users | Contact for pricing | FreeOpen Source |
| 10 users | Contact for pricing | FreeOpen Source |
| 25 users | Contact for pricing | FreeOpen Source |
| 50 users | Contact for pricing | FreeOpen Source |
The plan that fits each team size, billed monthly, before add-ons and usage charges. Each cost opens that tool's pricing calculator for the team size.
Who Glean and Portkey suit
Glean fits enterprise better; Portkey fits startups and developers better.
| Audience | Glean | Portkey |
|---|---|---|
| Startups | 2/10There is no self-serve or free plan, and minimum seat counts are reported at around 100. | 7/10A free tier and a $49 Production plan keep the entry cost low. |
| Developers | 6/10It offers Client and Indexing APIs, a Web SDK, agent toolkits and an MCP server. | 9/10Setup takes a few lines of code with OpenAI-compatible SDKs, and there is a free tier and an open-source gateway. |
| Enterprise | 10/10Contract minimums of about 100 seats, permission-aware search and broad compliance certifications all target large organizations. | 8/10The Enterprise plan adds SSO, RBAC, VPC deployment, and HIPAA/SOC 2 support, and the product is now part of Palo Alto Networks' Prisma AIRS. |
| Consultancies | 7/10Glean promotes consulting as an industry solution, and knowledge-heavy firms benefit from searching across many apps. | Not rated |
| Freelancers | 1/10Reported minimums of about 100 seats rule out solo users. | Not rated |
| Government | 5/10Its TX-RAMP Level 2 certification supports public sector buyers in Texas. | Not rated |
| Healthcare | 5/10HIPAA appears among its security certifications. | Not rated |
| IT Teams | 7/10Permission-aware search and enterprise controls fit IT teams, though setup takes significant IT work. | Not rated |
| Mid-Market | 6/10Larger mid-market firms can clear the reported minimum contract of 50,000 to 60,000 dollars, but the cost is steep at this size. | Not rated |
| Remote Teams | 6/10One search across Slack, Drive and other apps helps distributed teams find information. | Not rated |
| SaaS Companies | Not rated | 8/10Built for teams running production GenAI features across multiple LLM providers. |
| Small Business | 2/10Reviewers say minimum contracts and opaque pricing make Glean a poor fit for small budgets. | Not rated |
Which One Should You Choose?
Why choose Glean
- Higher Integration score (10/10 vs 9/10)
- Higher Scalability score (9/10 vs 8/10)
- Better fit for enterprise (10/10 vs 8/10)
Why choose Portkey
- Has a free plan (Glean does not)
- Higher Cost score (7/10 vs 2/10)
- Higher Analytics score (9/10 vs 6/10)
- Better fit for startups (7/10 vs 2/10)
- Better fit for developers (9/10 vs 6/10)
Pros & Cons
Glean
Pros
- Glean lists more than 275 connected apps, so employees can search Slack, Drive, Jira, Salesforce and other tools from one place.
- Search results follow each source system's access controls, which lowers the risk of exposing data to the wrong people.
- AI answers include citations that link back to the source documents, so users can check them.
- Developers get Client and Indexing APIs, a Web SDK, agent toolkits and an MCP server for building on Glean.
- Its compliance certifications include SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, ISO 42001 and HIPAA.
Cons
- Glean publishes no prices; third-party reports put seats at about 50 dollars or more per user per month with minimums of roughly 100 seats.
- There is no free trial, and some reports describe proofs of concept as paid.
- Setup, permission configuration and relevance tuning take significant work from IT teams.
- Reviewers report renewal increases of about 3 to 12 percent a year and possible extra fees for premium support.
- Some users report answers that do not fully match the source data, and say the ranking is hard to customize.
Portkey
Pros
- Unified API covering more than 1,600 models, with automatic fallbacks, retries, and load balancing.
- Detailed logs and traces show the latency, cost, and retry path of each request.
- An open-source core and a free tier let developers try it before paying.
- Enterprise governance features include budgets, rate limits, RBAC, SSO, and audit logs, with VPC deployment available.
Cons
- Since the 2026 acquisition, paid plans route through Palo Alto Networks' Prisma AIRS, which brings uncertainty about future pricing and roadmap.
- You pay for the gateway on top of LLM provider costs, and provider billing stays separate.
- Below Enterprise, support is community-only, and the free plan keeps logs for just 3 days.
- It may be more platform than needed for small prototypes that want only a simple proxy.
Not sold on either?
Frequently Asked Questions
Portkey scores higher on our AI Software criteria: 7.8/10 against 7/10 for Glean. The largest gap is in Cost: 2/10 for Glean and 7/10 for Portkey.
Portkey has a free plan; Glean does not list one.
Portkey is the better fit for startups: we rate it 7/10 for them, against 2/10 for Glean.
