Fabric vs Glean

Last updated May 2026

Glean searches your company's tools. Fabric understands everything you've saved. Glean connects to Slack, Google Drive, Confluence, Salesforce, Jira, and a hundred other enterprise apps and gives employees a single search bar across all of them. It's enterprise search infrastructure, deployed by IT, managed by admins, priced for organisations with hundreds of seats.

Fabric is a personal and team knowledge system. You save anything, any file type, from any source, and the AI understands it all. Not just text search across connected apps. Semantic search inside PDFs, jumping to the exact paragraph. Search inside audio recordings and video files via automatic transcription. Visual search. Colour search. Natural language queries across everything you've ever saved.

Glean retrieves what exists. Fabric creates new understanding.

Comparison table

What is Glean?

Glean is an enterprise AI search platform that connects to over 100 workplace applications and gives employees a single search bar across all of them. The platform uses a hybrid search methodology (keyword + vector + RAG) with a dual knowledge graph (Enterprise + Personal) that learns from your organisation's content and user behaviour. Permission-aware results ensure you only see what you're authorised to access. AI agents handle multi-step workflows. Work AI provides a conversational assistant within the enterprise context.

Pricing is enterprise-only and quote-based. Base search licence runs approximately $45-50/user/month. The AI add-on is ~$15/user/month on top. Minimum contracts start at roughly 100 seats with a $50-60K annual floor. Paid proof-of-concept engagements can reach $70K. Implementation involves professional services, permission mapping, and relevance tuning. Renewal increases of 7-12% are reported. Glean is built for large organisations with complex tool stacks and dedicated IT teams.

What is Fabric?

Fabric is an AI workspace that combines file storage, note-taking, search, tasks, collaboration, and publishing. The Fabric Memory Engine automatically extracts, enriches, and maps relationships between everything you save. Where Glean searches text across enterprise apps, Fabric searches meaning across every content format: text, PDFs to the paragraph, audio and video to the timestamp, images by visual similarity, assets by colour palette. And Fabric doesn't just search. It's where you write, think visually, annotate, collaborate, and publish.

Key differences

Search depth

This is where the comparison gets specific.

Glean searches text across connected enterprise applications. It's good at this. You type a query, it searches Slack messages, Google Docs, Confluence pages, Jira tickets, Salesforce records, and returns permission-aware results ranked by relevance. For finding a specific document, email thread, or Slack conversation across a large organisation's tool stack, Glean works.

Fabric searches meaning across every format:

• Text: Semantic search finds content even when you describe it differently from how it was written. Not keyword matching. Meaning matching.

• PDFs: In-document search jumps to the exact page and paragraph. Not just "this PDF matches your query." The exact location.

• Audio and video: Automatic transcription makes recordings searchable to the timestamp. "What did the client say about timelines?" finds the moment in the call.

• Visual search: Upload a reference image and find similar content across your library. A designer's reference photo finds related assets.

• Colour search: Find images containing specific palettes. Looking for assets in your brand's teal? Colour search handles that.

• Natural language: "Find the presentation about marketing metrics from last quarter" works as a query.

• Explore similar: Fabric surfaces files sharing themes and concepts you never explicitly searched for. Connections you didn't know existed.

Glean searches text. Fabric searches meaning, across text, PDFs, images, audio, video, colour, and visual similarity. That's not a feature difference. It's a different category of intelligence.

Retrieval vs understanding

Glean retrieves. You search, you find, you click through to the original tool where the content lives. Glean is a search layer across your company's existing systems. The content stays where it is. Glean points you to it.

Fabric understands. Every file you save is extracted, enriched, and indexed. The AI maps relationships between content automatically. You can ask questions that span everything you've saved and get answers with cited sources. The content doesn't just live somewhere. It's part of a connected body of knowledge the AI reasons across.

Creation

Glean has no creation tools. No notes editor. No document authoring. No spatial canvas. No annotations. No voice notes. No tasks. No publishing. It searches what exists. It doesn't help you build anything new.

Fabric is where knowledge gets built. Notes and docs with real-time co-editing. A spatial canvas with live embeds (Figma, YouTube, Google Maps) for visual thinking. Annotations pinned to any content type. Voice notes and meeting transcription. Tasks with due dates and reminders linked to files. Publishing with analytics. Glean helps you find things. Fabric helps you find things and then do something with them.

Enterprise integrations

Glean connects to 100+ enterprise applications. Slack, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Jira, Confluence, ServiceNow, Zendesk, GitHub, Notion, and dozens more. Permission-aware search respects your organisation's access controls. For a company with 1,000 employees across 30 tools, Glean provides unified search without changing existing workflows.

Fabric connects to Google Drive, Notion, Dropbox, Gmail, GitHub, Zapier, Raycast, and more via API, MCP, and CLI. Fewer connectors than Glean. But Fabric's connections bring content into a workspace where it's understood, not just indexed. The trade-off: Glean connects to more enterprise tools. Fabric does more with the content from fewer tools.

Security and compliance

Glean is SOC 2 Type II certified with RBAC, SSO/SAML, AES-256 encryption, GDPR/CCPA compliance, and enterprise admin controls. For regulated industries and large organisations where IT governance is non-negotiable, Glean's compliance infrastructure is built for that environment.

Fabric uses AES-256 encryption at rest and SSL in transit, and is CASA Tier 2 compliant. Secure, but not built for the enterprise compliance requirements Glean meets.

Pricing

Glean: ~$45-50/user/month base. ~$15/user/month AI add-on. Minimum ~100 seats. ~$50-60K/year minimum contract. Paid POC up to $70K. Implementation costs ($50-250K+). Reported renewal increases of 7-12%.

Fabric: generous free plan. $5/month Plus tier. No minimum seats. No sales process. No implementation costs. Self-service signup.

These aren't comparable prices because they aren't comparable products at comparable scales. Glean is enterprise infrastructure. Fabric is a knowledge workspace. The price gap reflects genuinely different products for genuinely different audiences.

Deployment

Glean requires IT-managed deployment. Sales process, contract negotiation, onboarding, permission mapping, relevance tuning, professional services. Weeks to months before value.

Fabric is self-service. Sign up. Save something. It works. Minutes to value.

When to use each

Use Fabric if you're an individual, a small team, or a knowledge worker who chooses your own tools. You want search that understands meaning across every content format, not just text. You want a workspace where you find, think, create, and publish, not just a search layer. You want to start in minutes for free. You want your knowledge system, not your company's search engine. See also: best AI workspace and how Fabric compares to Notion and Dropbox.

Use Glean if you're a large enterprise (1,000+ employees) with a complex tool stack, dedicated IT, and compliance requirements (SOC 2 Type II, GDPR/CCPA). You need unified search across 100+ enterprise applications with permission-aware results. Your IT team manages deployment. The budget supports $50K+/year contracts. If your company is already paying for Glean through IT, it's genuinely good at what it does.

Why people move from Glean to Fabric

They weren't a large enterprise. Glean's minimum contract, deployment complexity, and per-seat pricing are built for organisations with hundreds of employees. Smaller teams that evaluated Glean found the cost and overhead didn't fit. Fabric gives them more search intelligence at a fraction of the price.

They wanted to search beyond text. Glean searches text across connected apps. Fabric searches inside PDFs, audio, video, images, and colour palettes. For teams working with diverse content, Glean's text-only search missed too much.

They wanted to create, not just retrieve. Glean finds things. Fabric finds things and provides the workspace to do something with them: notes, canvas, annotations, tasks, publishing.

They wanted it now. Glean's deployment takes weeks to months. Fabric works in minutes.

FAQs

Can Fabric search across as many tools as Glean?

Not as many. Glean connects to 100+ enterprise applications. Fabric connects to Google Drive, Notion, Dropbox, Gmail, GitHub, and more. Fewer connectors, but Fabric searches more deeply across more content formats and provides a full workspace, not just search.

Does Glean search inside audio and video?

No. Glean searches text across connected enterprise apps. Fabric transcribes audio and video automatically and makes them searchable to the timestamp.

Does Glean have visual or colour search?

No. Glean is text-based search. Fabric's visual search finds similar images across your library. Colour search finds assets by palette. For design teams, creative agencies, and anyone working with visual content, this is a category of search Glean doesn't offer. See also: best digital asset management tool.

Is Fabric free?

Fabric has a generous free plan. $5/month Plus tier. No minimum seats, no sales process. Glean requires a sales conversation, minimum ~100 seats, and contracts starting at ~$50-60K/year.

Can Fabric replace Glean for a large enterprise?

Not for the same use case. Glean's 100+ enterprise connectors, permission-aware search, SOC 2 Type II compliance, and IT-managed deployment are built for large organisations. Fabric is built for individuals and small teams. Different products for different scales.

Can I use Fabric alongside Glean?

Yes. Glean searches your company's tool stack. Fabric is your personal knowledge system. Some knowledge workers use Glean for finding things across their company's tools and Fabric for their own research, notes, creative work, and personal content library. Glean is the company's search. Fabric is yours.

What does "explore similar" mean?

When you're looking at a file in Fabric, "explore similar" surfaces other content in your library that shares themes, concepts, or visual similarity, even if you never searched for it. Connections you didn't know existed. Glean's search returns results for queries. Fabric also surfaces what you didn't think to look for.