| Quick answer |
|---|
| The best company for enterprise AI search tools depends on where your documents already live. Microsoft 365 Copilot at $30 per user per month wins by default inside Microsoft 365. Glean is the strongest standalone platform at roughly $45 to $50 per seat plus an AI add-on. Coveo suits query-priced customer-facing search. |
| How we compare |
|---|
| Vendors are ranked on permission handling, where the index physically sits, and total contract cost rather than seat price. Figures were read from vendor pricing pages and named buyer-side reports in September 2026. We ran no head-to-head lab test — nothing here is a measured retrieval score. Every price was re-checked against the vendor’s own pricing page in September 2026, and figures available only from third-party trackers are marked as reported. No vendor paid for placement. Enterprise pricing is negotiated, so treat every number as a list point, not a quote. |
Table of Contents
Best company for enterprise AI search tools compared
| Vendor | Pricing basis | Listed entry cost | Where the index sits | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Copilot | Per seat, add-on | $18–30/user/mo | Inside your Microsoft 365 tenant | Microsoft-first organisations |
| Glean | Seat plus AI add-on plus credits | ~$45–50 plus ~$15/user/mo | Vendor cloud | Mixed stacks, many connectors |
| Coveo | Query volume | Quote only; Base was listed at $600/mo for 100k queries | Vendor cloud | Customer-facing and commerce search |
| Guru | Seats plus AI credits | Not fully published | Vendor cloud | Verified, owned answers |
| GoSearch | Per seat | Free plan; Pro $20/user/mo | Vendor cloud | Budget-constrained rollouts |
The question that decides the shortlist
Where does the majority of your knowledge already live? If the honest answer is SharePoint, Teams and Outlook, Microsoft 365 Copilot starts with an advantage no competitor can price away: the index is already inside your tenant and permissions are inherited rather than re-implemented. For a feature-by-feature tool shortlist, see our enterprise search buyer guide.
If the honest answer is a dozen systems — Slack, Confluence, Jira, Salesforce, Drive, a wiki nobody maintains — connector breadth is the product, and that is the argument for Glean. If the search is for customers rather than staff, you are in a different market again, priced on queries, which is where Coveo sits. And if what you actually want to know is whether ChatGPT and Perplexity mention your company to outsiders, that is a separate category entirely — the AI search monitoring tools we compare elsewhere, not enterprise search. For every category side by side, see our full AI tools list.
What the seat price hides
- Seat minimums. Buyer-side sources put Glean’s floor near 100 seats, or roughly $60,000 a year, which removes it from consideration for a 40-person company regardless of fit.
- Add-on stacking. Microsoft 365 Copilot’s $30 assumes you already pay for E3 or E5. Microsoft raised E3 to $39 and E5 to $60 on 1 July 2026, so all-in that is nearer $69 or $90 per user per month.
- Consumption credits. Glean and Guru both layer usage-based AI credits on top of seats, so the invoice moves with adoption — exactly when a successful rollout is hardest to defend.
- Connector counts. Coveo’s Base package, when it was listed at $600, included two connectors. Enterprises rarely need two.
- Implementation. Connector configuration, permission mapping and content clean-up are real projects, and they land on your team rather than the vendor’s.
The sticker multiple: what each advertised seat price really comes to
Every price in this category is quoted as one line on a bill with several. Subtract the advertised figure from the published all-in figure and you get the prerequisite — the licence or add-on you must already hold. Divide all-in by advertised and you get the sticker multiple. We have not seen a vendor publish this, so the arithmetic is ours; every input is a figure from the sources linked above.
| Vendor / configuration | Advertised | Prerequisite or add-on (all-in − advertised) | All-in per user/mo | Sticker multiple | Year one at 100 seats |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Copilot on E5 | $30 | $90 − $30 = $60 | $90 | 3.0× | $108,000 |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot on E3 | $30 | $69 − $30 = $39 | $69 | 2.3× | $82,800 |
| Glean (base $45–50, midpoint $47.50) | $47.50 | $62.50 − $47.50 = $15 AI add-on | $62.50 | 1.3× | $75,000 |
| GoSearch Pro | $20 | None published | $20 | 1.0× | $24,000 |
Year one is all-in multiplied by 100 seats and 12 months. The ranking flips once you read the multiple: Microsoft’s $30 is the cheapest advertised number on the page and the most expensive all-in, while Glean’s $47.50 — nearly 60 percent higher on the sticker — lands below it. Two figures stay outside the table because they are not published: Glean’s consumption credits sit on top of the $62.50, and Guru’s seat and credit rates are not disclosed at all. Coveo is excluded because query pricing has no per-seat equivalent.
Permissions are your problem, not the vendor’s
Every serious enterprise search platform here does security trimming properly: indexed items carry access control lists from the source, and results are filtered per user so nothing outside someone’s permissions appears. That part is solved.
The unsolved part is what your permissions already say. Enterprise AI search does not create exposure; it removes the obscurity that was hiding it. A salary spreadsheet in an over-shared folder was always readable — it was just unfindable. The NIST AI Risk Management Framework makes the same point in governance language: map the data and its access boundaries before you deploy the system, not after. Run a permissions audit on your top document repositories before the pilot, because the first week of any rollout is when someone discovers this the hard way. Our guide to AI agents for security questionnaires covers the vendor review that follows, and the EU AI Act covers the regulatory layer for European deployments.
The five vendors, one by one
Microsoft 365 Copilot
Microsoft 365 Copilot is listed at $30 per user per month on an annual commitment for enterprises, and $18 for organisations under 300 users. It is an add-on, not a standalone product: an E3 seat plus Copilot lands near $69 a month and an E5 seat near $90 since the July 2026 price rise. Security trimming is inherited from existing permissions.
Glean
Glean is the category reference point, priced hybrid: roughly $45 to $50 per user per month for the base plus about $15 per user for the AI add-on, with consumption credits on top for premium features. Buyer-side sources report a minimum around 100 seats, or roughly $60,000 a year.
Coveo
Coveo is priced by query volume rather than seat. The Base package was listed at $600 per month for up to 100,000 queries with two connectors; the pricing page as read on 11 October 2026 shows no dollar figures, only pricing units of 100,000 queries a month and a request-pricing form. Large deployments are reported well past $20,000 per month, and into six figures a year.
Guru
Guru is positioned around verified knowledge governance rather than raw retrieval: a curated internal wiki with search over it, so answers trace back to an owner who signed off. Pricing combines seats with usage-based AI credits and is not fully published.
GoSearch
GoSearch is a cheaper challenger with a free plan and Pro listed at $20 per user per month, with enterprise packages starting around 35 users. Worth quoting alongside Glean purely to see how much of the premium is product and how much is positioning.
How to run the evaluation
Write down thirty real questions people actually ask internally, sourced from your helpdesk queue rather than invented. Run the same thirty against every shortlisted vendor in a pilot with your own content and your own permissions. Score two things: whether the answer is correct, and whether it cites a document the asker is allowed to open.
Vendor demos use vendor data, and every one of them looks excellent. The thirty-question test is the cheapest way to find the gap between the demo and your own knowledge management reality. If you are also connecting these systems to agents, Model Context Protocol explains the plumbing, fine-tuning versus retrieval explains why almost every vendor here indexes rather than trains, and AI tools for business covers the wider stack.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the best company for enterprise AI search tools?
Glean is the strongest standalone platform, Microsoft 365 Copilot at $30 per user per month is the default if your data already lives in Microsoft 365, and Coveo suits query-heavy customer-facing search. Guru fits teams that need verified, owned answers rather than raw retrieval. There is no single best company — the answer follows where your documents already sit.
How do enterprise AI search vendors handle permissions and access control?
Through security trimming. Each indexed item carries an access control list copied from the source system, and results are filtered per user at query time, so anything outside a person’s ACL never appears. The failure mode is not the search tool: it is over-shared source content. If a sensitive folder was already readable by the whole company, enterprise AI search will surface it faster than anyone ever did manually.
Can enterprise AI search vendors index data without moving it off-premise?
Usually not by default. Most platforms build their own index in the vendor’s cloud, because ranking quality depends on having the content. Two exceptions matter: Microsoft 365 Copilot’s semantic index is built inside your Microsoft 365 tenant, and open-source options such as Onyx can be self-hosted entirely, which is the same trade-off covered in our walkthrough of running AI models offline. Some vendors offer query-time federation that avoids copying, at the cost of speed and ranking quality.
What do enterprise AI search vendors cost per seat?
Roughly $18 to $30 per user per month for Microsoft 365 Copilot, depending on organisation size, and around $45 to $50 for Glean’s base plus about $15 for its AI add-on. GoSearch lists Pro at $20 per user. Coveo prices on queries rather than seats, in units of 100,000 queries a month; the $600 entry figure it used to list is no longer on its pricing page. Seat price is rarely the whole bill.
What should you check before signing an enterprise AI search contract?
Five things, all in writing. The seat minimum (Glean’s is reported near 100 seats, about $60,000 a year), how consumption credits are metered and capped, how many connectors the tier includes (Coveo Base was listed with two), what implementation work is in scope, and how your index is deleted if you leave. Then run a pilot on thirty of your own questions before signature.
Should you choose an enterprise search vendor or a specific tool?
Start from the tool shortlist, then judge the vendor behind it. Features decide whether a product fits your content and permissions, but security reviews, support, data residency and roadmap decide whether it will still fit in two years. Shortlist on features, decide on the company.
Conclusion
Default to Microsoft 365 Copilot if your content already lives in Microsoft 365 — at $30 per user per month on top of an existing licence, it is the cheapest route to a working answer engine and the permissions come free. Choose Glean when the content is genuinely scattered and connector breadth is the product you are buying.
Take Coveo seriously only for customer-facing search, look at Guru when answers need a named owner, and quote GoSearch alongside whoever you prefer so you know what the premium is buying. Then insist on a pilot with your own thirty questions before signing anything.
