Ortelian vs Glean:
which fits your company?
Glean is a Work AI platform. It connects to the apps your company uses and gives every employee permission-aware search, an assistant and a way to build their own agents. Ortelian is a platform for running AI agents on a maintained world model of your company, deployed by our team on site. We work on site not because our product needs it, but because your company does. AI has the most impact when the work itself changes, and that takes time with the people who do it.
Choose Glean if the goal is company-wide search and an assistant for everyone. Choose Ortelian if the goal is to change how specific, context-heavy work runs. After launch, your team runs it or we keep running it for you. Many companies could use both.
At a glance
Two platforms, built for different problems.
Glean is licensed and rolled out across the company. Ortelian comes with a team that works on site to redesign the work and deploy the agents with you. After launch, your team runs it or we keep running it for you. Access to the Ortelian platform is part of an engagement, and there is no self-serve product. What we say about Glean here comes from its own website and documentation.
When to choose Glean
When the problem is finding things, across the whole company.
Choose Glean when people lose time looking for documents, answers and experts across many SaaS apps. Company-wide search and an assistant for everyone is what Glean is built for. It connects to hundreds of work apps out of the box and inherits each app’s permissions, so people only see what they are allowed to see.
It also fits when you want every employee to have an assistant and to build their own agents. Glean’s agent builder works without code, starting from plain language or a template. And it fits when your IT team wants to roll out one platform across the company and run it, with Glean or one of its consulting and integration partners helping.
When to choose Ortelian
When a specific piece of work has to change.
Choose Ortelian when you want AI to change how a specific piece of work runs, such as a planning round, a back-office check or a sales process with many people and sources, and that work depends on context no single system holds. Faster answers alone don’t change how that work runs. The process has to be redesigned, the standard agreed on real examples, and agents built that do the steps inside your systems. We work on site not because our product needs it, but because your company does. The detail is on how we work and on what an AI-native deployment partner does.
The platform is what stays with you. Agents work from a world model for knowledge work: your systems of record joined with outside sources, organised by an ontology we define with you, with every fact keeping its source. Workshops during the build prepare your team to own the work. After launch, they run it or we keep running it for you. Either way, we host and operate the platform, and the evaluations keep running on the work in use. It doesn’t depend on someone opening an app: your own agents and AI tools can work with the platform headless, through the scoped tools we set up with you. It is hosted in the EU, agents use models with zero data retention, and anything that leaves the company waits for a person’s approval.
01 · Software
The code holds everything the work needs.
That’s why AI took off in software first.
02 · Internal knowledge
A wiki holds what the company writes down.
That’s enough for questions about the company itself.
03 · Knowledge work
Your work also depends on the world outside.
Customers, competitors, regulations, people moving. We join it with what’s inside, in one model.
Inside the company The world around it
Can you use both?
Yes. They do different jobs.
Glean can stay the place where employees search and ask questions across the company. Ortelian is where specific, redesigned work runs: agents work from the world model and act in your systems of record within agreed limits. Both work with the systems you already use, so neither asks your team to move.
If you run both, we agree in the audit which systems and sources the Ortelian agents use and where the line between the two sits. Because the platform can run headless, other AI tools your team uses can work with it through scoped tools, once that is set up as part of the engagement.
Other comparisons: Ortelian vs building in-house, Ortelian vs AI consultancies, Ortelian vs Microsoft Copilot, Ortelian vs ChatGPT Enterprise and Ortelian vs Sierra.
Questions
Questions buyers ask when comparing.
What is the main difference between Ortelian and Glean?
Both are platforms. Glean is licensed and rolled out across the company: search, an assistant and agents across your work apps. If the main need is company-wide search, Glean is built for that, and Ortelian is not an enterprise search product. Ortelian is a platform for running agents on a world model of your company, deployed by our team on site, where we redesign specific work with your people. After launch, your team runs it or we keep running it for you.
Can our own agents use the Ortelian platform?
Yes, once it is set up for you as part of the engagement. The platform can run headless: your own agents and AI tools, such as Claude or ChatGPT, work with the world model through scoped tools, and each one only gets the access its job needs. There is no self-serve product.
Who builds and runs the agents?
With Glean, teams usually build their own agents in its no-code builder, with help from Glean or a partner if they want it. With Ortelian, we build them with your team on site, test them on real examples of your work and agree the standard they must meet. Workshops during the build prepare your team to own the work. After launch, they run it or we keep running it for you. Either way, the evaluations keep running on the work in use.
Where is the data hosted?
Ortelian’s platform is hosted in the EU, and agents use models with zero data retention. Glean runs single-tenant, either hosted by Glean in a region you choose, with EU regions available, or in your own AWS or GCP account. Check the details for your own deployment with each vendor.
How are they priced?
Glean’s documentation describes a per-user, per-month licence, with AI model usage billed on top or drawn from a pool of credits, depending on the plan. It does not publish seat prices on its website. Ortelian comes as an engagement: a fixed fee for the audit, credited against the first build, a fixed fee for each build and a monthly platform fee with unlimited users and no annual commitment.
Let’s work out the fit.
Bring the work that is held up and the tools you already have. We’ll tell you whether it is a job for us, or whether a platform like Glean is the better place to start.
