This comparison covers two products that buyers often line up against each other when they shouldn't. Glean is an enterprise AI search and agents. Gravity is an outcome runtime. The labels look similar at a glance, the buyer experience is not.

I'm Aryan, founder of Gravity. The point of this post is not to pick a winner. It's to help a buyer pick the right category for their specific job. Both products do real work for real customers. They do different work, and the cost of choosing the wrong category is a quarter of mismatched expectations, not a refund.

Why I'm writing this comparison

I shut down three startups before Gravity. The pattern that killed two of them was buying a tool whose category did not match the job. A workflow builder for what was really a chat assistant problem. A chat assistant for what was really a scheduled agent problem. The tools were good. The category was wrong.

So I write these head-to-heads like I wish someone had written them for me in 2022: not feature lists, but category framing. The question I want a buyer to answer is "which shape of work am I doing?" Once that is clear, the product choice falls out almost automatically. The comparisons between Glean and Gravity below are organised around that question, not around who wins on any single benchmark.

What Glean does

Glean started as enterprise search across SaaS tools and has expanded into AI agents and an assistant that work over the same knowledge graph. The product targets large companies that want unified search, answers, and increasingly, action.

Where Glean shines:

Glean owns enterprise search. The knowledge graph across SaaS tools is a genuine moat that took years to build. Their move into agents is a natural extension of "we already know everything inside your company."

What Gravity does differently

Gravity is not enterprise search. It is a self-serve runtime for founders. The user does not buy a knowledge graph; they write a sentence describing one specific recurring outcome.

"Every Thursday at 4pm, check our HubSpot for any deals that have been stuck in Demo Scheduled stage for more than 14 days, and post a list in #sales with the deal owner and a one-line nudge."

Glean answers questions about deals if asked. Gravity does the check every Thursday and posts the nudge without anyone asking. Describing outcomes is the only interface in Gravity.

Side-by-side capability comparison

CapabilityGleanGravity
GTM modelEnterprise salesSelf-serve
Primary valueSearch and Q&A across SaaSRecurring autonomous work
Audience500+ seat companiesFounders, ops leads, small teams
Time to valueWeeks to months of setupAbout 60 seconds
Integrations postureMany SaaS connectors, deep indexingMany SaaS connectors, no indexing
PricingEnterprise contractsBundled monthly fee
Best fitCompanies with knowledge fragmentationOperators with recurring work

The category split

Glean is the search layer for enterprise SaaS. Gravity is the runtime layer for founder SaaS work. Different problems, different buyers, different prices.

The choice is not always about features. It's about how your team works and what you optimise for. We made the same argument in bootstrapping an AI agent platform: pick the category whose default fits how you already think.

Pricing reality

For a deeper look at recurring agent cost, see our note on AI agent cost models and the breakdown of how bootstrapped agent economics change when bills are bundled instead of metered.

A 60-second decision framework

If you have one minute and need to choose, run through these four questions in order. The first one to give you a hard answer is the answer.

  1. Does this work need to recur on a schedule without my involvement? If yes, lean Gravity. If no, Glean or another single-session tool is fine.
  2. Do I want to describe the outcome, or assemble the steps? Outcome means Gravity. Steps means Glean (most of the time).
  3. Is my buyer me, or is my buyer procurement? Self-serve means Gravity. Procurement-led means Glean if it fits that motion.
  4. Will my monthly bill scale with usage? If predictable bundled pricing matters, lean Gravity. If you prefer paying for what you use, Glean's enterprise contracts. sticker is bespoke and seat-scaled may fit better.

The framework is biased, of course. Gravity is the product I am building. The point of writing it out is that the bias is visible. You can run the same four questions and ignore my recommended branch; the framework still works.

When Glean is the right choice

When Gravity is the right choice

Migration: what changes if you switch

Migration between Glean and Gravity is rare because the audiences differ. A small team running Glean might find the contract heavy and the wedge mostly unused at small scale; Gravity replaces the agent feature, not the search.

  1. List the Glean agent recipes you actually use.
  2. For each, write the outcome as a sentence in Gravity.
  3. Connect the relevant SaaS sources.
  4. Dry run and compare output.
  5. Keep Glean for search if the company still needs it.

The biggest migration surprise tends to be how few jobs actually fit cleanly on either side. Most teams end up with a mix: a handful of recurring outcome-shaped jobs on Gravity, and a handful of category-specific jobs on Glean. The fight between "all in on one tool" and "use the right tool for each job" rarely ends with "all in." Plan for the hybrid from day one and the migration is undramatic.

Common mistakes buyers make

From the conversations I have had with operators picking between these two categories, three mistakes show up over and over:

  1. Buying for a one-off and getting stuck. The first task always looks one-off. Then it recurs. Buyers who chose a tool optimised for single sessions wake up six weeks later with a manual prompt habit and a quietly growing bill.
  2. Confusing intelligence with action. Both Glean and Gravity use strong models. The model is not the differentiator. The differentiator is what happens between prompt and result. Asking "which has the smarter AI?" is the wrong question; both are smart enough.
  3. Skipping the pricing model question. Enterprise contracts. Sticker is bespoke and seat-scaled. Gravity is bundled. Those two structures behave differently at high usage. Run the math at 10 runs a week and 100 runs a week before committing.

Frequently asked questions

What is Glean?

Glean is enterprise AI search across SaaS tools. It indexes internal data and serves answers, with newer agent features built on top.

Is Glean a fit for startups?

Less so. The product, sales motion, and contract sizes are enterprise-shaped. Small teams rarely justify the cost.

How is Gravity different from Glean?

Gravity does not index your company. It runs single agents for specific outcomes, self-serve, with no enterprise contract.

Can Gravity search across my SaaS?

Gravity can pull from any connected SaaS to complete a specific task. It is not a search product, it is a runtime.

Which one is cheaper?

Gravity, for any small team. Glean is priced for the enterprise where the savings from unified search justify the contract.

Three takeaways before you close this tab

  1. Search vs run. Glean answers. Gravity acts.
  2. Enterprise wedge vs founder wedge. Same SaaS world, opposite ends.
  3. Self-serve still wins for small teams. A founder cannot wait for procurement on every new tool.

Sources