Glean alternatives that run on your own servers

Most lists of Glean alternatives are written by a vendor that ranks its own product first, and most mix cloud services with software you run yourself. This one sorts the alternatives by where the software and your documents actually live, reads the license behind each open source one, and quotes each product's own pages. Checked in September 2026.

Updated October 2, 2026

01Where Glean runs

Glean runs as a cloud service, or as "cloud-prem": "Host Glean in your own GCP account" or "Host Glean in your own AWS account". Cloud-prem keeps the index in your cloud account, but it is still Glean's to operate: "Your Glean tenant is run as a managed service by Glean and is kept up to date alongside our SaaS tenants", through a maintenance account Glean "requires ... to roll updates to your tenant". No on-premises or air-gapped option is documented.

Inside that, Glean says it will "enforce source-system permissions on every read and write". Outside assistants reach it through its MCP server with "OAuth 2.0 with Dynamic Client Registration (DCR) where supported by the host", and "MCP activity logs capture tool usage events for each MCP server", filterable "by MCP server, tool, user, and date range". For systems behind a firewall, its connector docs offer Push API connectors: "Ideal for custom applications, self-hosted environments, or systems behind firewalls." The documents are pushed to Glean.

So "self-hosted" can mean three different things, and the lists below keep them apart:

Your own servers. The software runs on hardware you run, inside your network, and can work with no connection to the vendor.
Your cloud account, the vendor's operation. Your data sits in your AWS, Azure or Google account, but the vendor runs and updates the deployment.
The vendor's cloud. A service.

02On your own servers

Product	License	Where it runs	Who may read what	Outside assistants
Onyx	MIT core; enterprise directories under the Onyx Enterprise License	"AWS, GCP, Azure, or your own Kubernetes"; "can be run fully air-gapped with no external third parties"	"Source permissions enforced at query time"; syncing them from the sources is an Enterprise Edition feature	MCP server, with a personal access token or API key
PipesHub	Apache 2.0	"Fully supports both on-premise and cloud-based deployments"	"Access is resolved when the query runs, against the source system's own permissions"	MCP server; the agent "connects as a specific person"
Archestra	AGPL 3.0 core, plus an enterprise license	Docker for trying it, Helm on Kubernetes for production	Source permissions synced per person, an Enterprise feature (free in production under 30 users); filtered after ranking	MCP gateway with OAuth 2.1
Elasticsearch	Elastic's licenses	Self-managed	Connectors store each document's access list once document level security is on; off by default for network drives	Agent Builder MCP endpoint, API keys on self-managed
Credal	Proprietary	"Air-Gapped On-Prem - Run on your self-hosted Kubernetes"	"Every tool call respects the user's existing access."	MCP servers used "from Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, or your own apps"
Squirro	Proprietary	Private cloud, on-premises or hybrid	"the secure, private, scalable, permissions-aware, and fully auditable Squirro platform"	Not documented on the pages read
Atolio	Proprietary	"in your own AWS, Azure, or GCP environment, or on-premises with Red Hat OpenShift"	"Users only ever see content they're already authorized to view"	Not documented on the pages read
Thunai	Proprietary	"Self-hosting and on-premise deployment options"	"Enterprise permission sets mapped to your existing role structure"	"Thunai MCP" connects Thunai to other systems
Mindbreeze InSpire	Proprietary	An "appliance box" integrated into your data center	Not re-checked for this page	InSpire tools for AI agents over MCP
Cohere North	Proprietary	"in your own VPC, on-prem environment, or through Cohere's secure Model Vault"	Not stated on the pages read	Its MCP SDK builds servers that North calls

03In your cloud account or on your premises, run by the vendor

Product	Where it runs	Who may read what
Glean cloud-prem	Your AWS or GCP account, "run as a managed service by Glean"	Source-system permissions on every read
Google Gemini Enterprise on Google Distributed Cloud	"Fully managed on-prem and edge cloud solution available in both connected and air-gapped options"	"Permissions-aware search results" with access control list enforcement
Contextual AI	"Multi-tenant SaaS, dedicated cloud instances, or private VPC deployment on your preferred cloud platform"	AI outputs respect document permissions, "so users only see results from documents they're allowed to access"
GoSearch	"Deploy in your own VPC with your own models"	"Users only see data they're authorized to access."

04Cloud services

Product	What its pages say
Guru	Its MCP tools "do not access raw documents or unverified data", relying on its verified knowledge layer.
Coveo	A hosted MCP server: "Coveo provisions it. Coveo maintains it. There's no server to manage." Its tools "inherit Coveo's identity and permission models".
Microsoft 365 Copilot	Federated connectors "retrieve content in real time by using Model Context Protocol (MCP) without indexing data into Microsoft Graph."
Box AI	"Box AI respects your existing permissions and access controls", with a Box MCP server for outside agents.
Notion	"Notion MCP continues to respect all existing Notion permissions", and Enterprise admins approve which MCP clients may connect.
Document360	An MCP server: "Connect ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot & other AI tools using a reusable JSON configuration instantly." "All AI operations respect role-based permissions."
ClickUp	A hosted MCP server at mcp.clickup.com, with OAuth sign-in.
Dust	An agent platform whose "dual-layer permission model separates what agents can access from who can use them."
Bloomfire	A knowledge base that "uses AI to flag outdated or redundant content before it pollutes your search results".
Unleash	Now part of Zendesk: "Zendesk Acquires Unleash to Enhance AI-first Employee Service Business" (December 18, 2025).

05The open source licenses, read

"Open source" on a list of alternatives covers very different terms. What each project's license file says:

PipesHub: Apache 2.0.
Onyx: the core is MIT; the enterprise directories are under the separate Onyx Enterprise License, and syncing permissions from source systems is an Enterprise Edition feature. GitHub reports the repository license as "Other".
Archestra: "The base platform is licensed under AGPL-3.0; a subset of Enterprise features is licensed under the Archestra Enterprise License." Teams of "fewer than 30" users may use the Enterprise features in production without paying.
Dify: "a modified version of the Apache License 2.0, with the following additional conditions", which bar running it as a multi-tenant service without permission and require its logo to stay.
Open WebUI: a BSD-style license with a branding clause: the "Open WebUI" branding may not be removed except in deployments of 50 or fewer users, or with written permission.
FastGPT: Apache 2.0 "with the following additional conditions", including no multi-tenant service without written authorization.
Arkon: PolyForm Internal Use 1.0.0: source available for internal use, not an open source license.
RAGFlow (Apache 2.0), LibreChat and AnythingLLM (both MIT) are permissive, but their own documentation describes no permission sync from source systems: access is set inside the app, or not at all.

06Search tools and agent platforms

Lists of Glean alternatives also mix two kinds of product. A search tool answers questions from your documents. An agent platform builds assistants that act across your tools, and search is one of its features. If the job is "find the right passage and show where it came from, only to people who may see it", start with the search tools above and ask the questions on permission-aware RAG. If the job is automation, the comparison is a different one.

Where PremAgentic fits

PremAgentic is on-premises knowledge retrieval, on your own servers. It indexes the Markdown, text, PDF, Word and Excel files your organization keeps and gives your people and your AI assistants cited passages out of them, with your rules enforced before anything is retrieved. It runs on Windows or Linux, on stock PostgreSQL 14 or later, with a local embedding model: no cloud service and no third-party API key.

Who may read what is set in PremAgentic, folder by folder, and checked on every search.
Superseded material is held back unless a caller asks for history, and a document past its stale-after date is flagged for people and held from agents.
Assistants connect over MCP, read, and never write. A folder marked never for hosted models is never served to an assistant whose model runs outside the network.

It returns passages with citations and generates no prose. PremAgentic is open source under the GNU Affero General Public License 3.0. The code is at github.com/premagentic/premagentic, and the latest release has the Linux and Windows archives.

Sources

Every fact about another product comes from that product's own pages or license files, read between September 20 and 28, 2026.