AnythingMCP vs Glean: live system access or a search index?
Glean is an enterprise AI search platform that indexes company apps into a permission-aware graph. AnythingMCP gives Claude, ChatGPT and Copilot live access to your systems, plus skills, memory and file search. When each fits.
Glean is an enterprise AI search and agents platform. It indexes your company's apps through 275+ connectors, keeps each user's source permissions, and builds an Enterprise Graph that Glean Assistant, Glean Agents and, through Glean's MCP server, Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor can search. AnythingMCP works the other way round: it gives AI clients live access to your systems through MCP tools, reads and writes included, and adds a company brain on top: AI skills, company memory, a knowledge graph and File Search over your file servers.
Both get called a "company brain". The difference is search over a copy versus work in the live system.
TL;DR
- Pick Glean if your main problem is finding knowledge spread across hundreds of SaaS apps (docs, tickets, chats, wikis) for thousands of employees, and you want a polished assistant with a large-enterprise contract.
- Pick AnythingMCP if your AI needs current data and actions in ERP, CRM, shop, databases and legacy systems, in the AI clients your people already use, self-hosted or in the EU, at a price that fits a mid-sized company.
Side by side
| AnythingMCP | Glean | |
|---|---|---|
| Core model | Live tools: each call reads or writes the system now | Search index and graph built from connectors |
| Where people work | Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Cursor | Glean Assistant and Agents; Glean's MCP server for other clients |
| Data freshness | Live, at the time of the call | As fresh as the last index sync |
| Write actions (create order, update record) | ✅ Per tool, governed by role | Through agent actions and tools |
| Connectors | 713 ready connectors, 12,000+ tools | 275+ connectors |
| ERP, databases, SOAP, OData | ✅ SAP, DATEV, weclapp, SQL, SOAP, OData | Focus on SaaS knowledge sources |
| Files | File Search over SFTP, FTP, WebDAV, S3, NAS (and mounted shares self-hosted) | Cloud storage connectors (Box, Dropbox, S3, Azure File Share…) |
| Memory | Company and personal memory shared by every AI client (Enterprise) | Personal Graph per user |
| Procedures | AI skills, written or learned from real tool calls | Agents built in Glean |
| Permissions | Roles per tool; per-user sign-in on Enterprise | Inherits source permissions for indexed content |
| Rate limits | Per tool, per user, per minute and hour | Not documented per tool |
| Hosting | Cloud in Frankfurt, or self-hosted on your servers | Single-tenant SaaS, or in your own AWS or GCP |
| Open source | ✅ AGPL-3.0 | ❌ |
| Pricing | Community free; Cloud €19 or €49/month (VAT incl.); Enterprise quoted | Not public; sold through sales |
Glean facts from glean.com/connectors, Glean MCP docs, Glean deployment docs and glean.com/pricing, November 2026.
Where Glean wins
- Search across everything written down. Docs, wikis, tickets, chats and email from 275+ apps in one ranked, permission-aware index. For "where is the document about X?", that is hard to beat.
- Permissions inherited automatically. Users only find content they can already open in the source system.
- A mature assistant and agent builder for employees who do not use another AI client.
- MCP in both directions. Glean's MCP server brings its search to Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and other hosts, and its MCP Gateway and host features let Glean call external MCP servers.
- Scale. Built for large enterprises, with single-tenant or in-your-cloud deployment.
Where AnythingMCP wins
1. Live data and real actions
An index is a copy. When a sales rep asks "what is this customer's open balance and which orders are late?", the answer has to come from the ERP now. AnythingMCP calls the system at the moment of the question, and where you allow it, the AI can act: create a quote, update a ticket, draft an invoice. Roles decide which tools each user may call, and per-tool rate limits protect the systems.
2. The systems an index does not reach
ERP and accounting systems (SAP S/4HANA and Business One, DATEV, weclapp, Odoo), SQL databases, SOAP services and OData APIs are where companies keep their numbers. AnythingMCP connects them with 713 ready connectors or by importing an API spec, without code. See Legacy systems.
3. A company brain that learns how you work
- AI skills: procedures like "revenue means order statuses 2, 3 and 4", written by hand or learned automatically from real tool calls and fixed errors, approved by an admin
- Knowledge graph: how your systems connect, so the agent links a CRM account to its ERP orders
- Company memory (Enterprise): facts saved in Claude are found again in Copilot or ChatGPT
- File Search and File Share: PDFs, Excel, Word and Outlook files on your SFTP, WebDAV, S3 or NAS folders, answered with file, page and date
- Code Mode: one short program that joins data from several systems in an isolated runner
See Enterprise and Chat with documents vs RAG vs File Search.
4. Your AI clients, your servers
Your people keep using Claude, ChatGPT or Copilot. AnythingMCP is listed in the Claude Directory and the ChatGPT app directory, and works with Copilot Studio. It can run entirely on your servers, or on AnythingMCP Cloud in Frankfurt with a DPA.
5. Transparent pricing
Glean does not publish prices. AnythingMCP's Community edition is free to self-host (up to 3 active users); Cloud costs €19 or €49 a month; Enterprise is quoted. See pricing.
Decision guide
| Question your people ask | Better fit |
|---|---|
| "Find the onboarding doc / the ticket / the Slack thread about X" | Glean |
| "What did customer X order this quarter, and what is still open?" | AnythingMCP |
| "Create the quote and attach the current price list" | AnythingMCP |
| "Which supplier contract on the file server mentions this clause?" | AnythingMCP File Search |
| Company-wide search for 5,000+ employees across SaaS apps | Glean |
They also combine well: Glean for knowledge search, AnythingMCP for live systems, and AnythingMCP's MCP bridge can serve Glean's MCP server next to your ERP and database tools.
FAQ
Is AnythingMCP a Glean alternative? For AI access to live business systems, files and company knowledge in Claude, ChatGPT or Copilot, yes. For enterprise-wide search across hundreds of SaaS knowledge sources, Glean is built for that job.
Does Glean support MCP? Yes. Glean runs a remote MCP server for clients such as Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor, an MCP Gateway, and can call remote MCP servers from Glean Assistant.
How much does Glean cost? Glean does not publish prices; it is sold through its sales team.
Can Glean be self-hosted? Glean offers a customer-hosted deployment in your own AWS or GCP account, managed by Glean. AnythingMCP can be self-hosted with Docker, and its code is open source.
Does AnythingMCP index my data? Not for systems: tools call them live. File Search indexes the documents in folders you choose, so the AI can search them with page-level answers.
Try AnythingMCP
git clone https://github.com/HelpCode-ai/anythingmcp.git
cd anythingmcp && ./setup.sh
Or start the Cloud free trial: 7 days, hosted in Frankfurt.