Glean vs Things

Glean is an enterprise work AI platform that indexes a company's apps, documents and conversations and lets employees search, ask questions and run agents over that knowledge. It was founded in 2019 in Palo Alto by former Google search engineer Arvind Jain, who previously co-founded Rubrik, and it raised a $150 million Series F at a $7.2 billion valuation in June 2025.

The platform has three layers: Glean Search, a ranked enterprise search; Glean Assistant, a chat assistant grounded in company data; and Glean Agents, which automate multi-step work from natural-language instructions. Underneath sit 275+ connectors, an Enterprise Graph that maps people, content and activity, and permission enforcement that mirrors each source system in near real time. It also offers APIs and MCP support. Pricing is not published; it is sold per seat through sales, with demos instead of a self-serve trial.

Glean fits large organizations with knowledge scattered across Slack, Google Drive, Confluence, Jira, Salesforce and code hosts. It is overkill and likely too costly for small companies, and results depend on clean permissions in source systems. Microsoft 365 Copilot is the natural rival for Microsoft-centric firms, ChatGPT Enterprise offers broader general AI with connectors, and Notion AI covers search well if Notion is already your wiki.

Glean announced in December 2025 that its annual recurring revenue had passed $200 million, doubling in nine months. When evaluating, run a pilot on your messiest knowledge sources and test permission boundaries with a few restricted documents.

Things is a personal task manager for Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Apple Vision Pro made by Cultured Code, a small independent company based in Stuttgart, Germany. Things 3, released in 2017, won an Apple Design Award and is widely regarded as one of the most carefully designed productivity apps on Apple platforms.

Tasks live in areas and projects, projects can be divided with headings, and checklists sit inside tasks. The Today, Upcoming, Anytime and Someday views separate what needs attention now from later ideas, and This Evening helps plan the end of the day. Quick Entry with natural language dates captures tasks from anywhere on the Mac, calendar events appear next to scheduled tasks, and tags and filters add flexibility. Things integrates with Shortcuts, Siri, widgets and the share sheet. It is sold as a one-time purchase per platform, with separate prices for Mac, iPhone and iPad and free Things Cloud sync, so there is no subscription.

Things fits individuals in the Apple ecosystem who want a calm, fast and beautiful personal task manager. It has no collaboration or shared projects, no Windows, Android or web app, and each device type needs its own purchase. Todoist works on every platform and supports teams, OmniFocus offers deeper GTD power for Apple users, and TickTick adds habits and a Pomodoro timer.