Software advice
Best AI Knowledge Base and Enterprise Search Tools in 2026
An AI knowledge base or enterprise search tool is software that indexes a company's documents, wikis, chats and tickets and answers employee questions in plain language, with links back to the source. Some products are wikis that add AI answers, others are search layers that sit over the tools a company already runs. It is not a public chatbot trained on the open web.
Quick answer
Slite ranks first for small and mid-sized teams that want a maintained wiki with AI answers at a published price. Onyx fits teams that need self-hosting and open source code. Guru fits companies that treat verified answers as a governed layer for other AI tools.
Buyers of this software face two separate decisions that vendors blur together. One is where the knowledge is written: a wiki you maintain, or the scattered tools you already have. The other is who can see which answer, since a search layer that ignores permissions leaks salary pages and board notes. This ranking judges tools on those two points first, then on price transparency, hosting choices and how much work it takes to keep content current. Prices and policies were read from vendor pages in October 2026. We did not run benchmark tests, so retrieval quality is described through design choices and the vendor's own documentation, not through scores.
The 11 best AI knowledge base and enterprise search tools in 2026, ranked
There is no score. Vendors can pay for more visibility on this website, for example a higher place in a ranking or more room on a page. Commercial relationships can also affect which products we feature and how prominently. How we rank.
| # | Tool | Best for | Free plan | Entry price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Slite | Teams of 10 to 300 that want a maintained wiki with cited AI answers | Trial | $10 per user per month, billed yearly |
| 2 | Onyx | Security-minded teams that want open source search and chat on their own infrastructure | Trial | $20 per user per month, annual billing |
| 3 | Guru | Support and operations teams that need verified answers feeding other AI tools | No | Quoted |
| 4 | Glean | Large companies with many SaaS systems and a budget for a managed rollout | No | Quoted |
| 5 | Notion | Teams already writing docs and projects in Notion who want answers across connected apps | Yes | €9.50 per seat per month (Plus); €19.50 on Business |
| 6 | Tettra | Small teams that want a Slack-first bot answering repeat questions from a simple wiki | Trial | $8 per user per month, 10-user minimum |
| 7 | Coveo | Companies embedding search and generative answers in a help center, site or workplace portal | Trial | Quoted |
| 8 | Elastic | Engineering teams building their own search or agent retrieval on a proven index | Trial | Quoted |
| 9 | Bloomfire | Research, support and field teams that want governed, AI-ready knowledge with a fixed contract price | No | Quoted |
| 10 | Moveworks | IT and HR service desks in ServiceNow shops that want one search-and-act assistant | No | Quoted |
| 11 | Document360 | Product and support teams publishing a public help center with AI search and answers | No | Quoted |
- 1
Slite ranks first because a buyer can read the price, start a 14-day trial without a card and get AI search in the entry plan. Its doc verification workflow addresses stale pages, the usual reason internal bots fail. It is a wiki first, so companies with thousands of existing pages elsewhere will want a connector-heavy search layer instead.
Strong on
- Published prices, with AI search and MCP and API access already in the $10 Basic plan
- Doc verification workflow lets owners confirm pages stay correct
- States SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA and GDPR compliance with EU hosting
Weak on
- Search across connected tools needs the $20 Pro plan, which also meters agent credits
- Content must be written or migrated into Slite to be most useful
Skip it if: Companies that need to search thousands of documents already spread across other systems without moving them. Basic includes unlimited docs and Ask AI search; Pro at $20 adds the agent and connected-tool search.
- 2
Onyx
Onyx ranks second because it is the one tool here that can run in your own cloud, on bare metal or air-gapped, with open source code your team can audit. It lists 40 app connectors and developer APIs at a published price. The site now says Onyx is joining Zoom, so ask about the roadmap before a long contract.
Strong on
- Open source with self-hosting, so index and embeddings can stay inside your boundary
- Lets teams route each department to a different LLM, including open weights
- Source permissions are enforced at query time according to the vendor
Weak on
- Announced it is joining Zoom, which adds uncertainty about independent product direction
- Self-hosting means your team operates infrastructure, upgrades and model costs
Skip it if: Small teams with no engineer to run infrastructure who only need a simple internal wiki. Business plan; Enterprise adds SAML SSO, on-premise deployment and a service-level agreement by quote.
- 3
Guru
Guru ranks third because it frames knowledge as a governed layer, with verification, permission inheritance and audit logs that also serve other AI tools through MCP. It names SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA. The cost is a sales conversation and a services-heavy package, which puts it out of reach of teams wanting a quick trial.
Strong on
- Verification workflows and audit trails for human and AI readers of the same content
- More than 100 integrations, including Slack, Teams, Salesforce and Zendesk
- States that customer data never trains its AI models
Weak on
- No public per-seat price; pricing is a custom package built around scale and AI maturity
- Less suited to very small teams that want to sign up and start in an afternoon
Skip it if: Startups looking for a card-based self-serve plan with a visible monthly price. Guru sells a tailored package with solution engineers instead of a listed per-seat price.
- 4
Glean
Glean sits fourth because its scope exceeds search: more than 250 connectors, an assistant, an agent builder and an AI gateway, sold as one enterprise platform. It lists SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and ISO 42001. Only organizations with a few thousand seats are likely to use that breadth, and the quote process is slow.
Strong on
- More than 250 connectors across common business systems
- Lists SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, ISO 42001, HIPAA and GDPR on its security page
- Supports 40 or more language models through one governed layer
Weak on
- No published pricing, so budgeting requires a sales cycle
- Platform breadth means a larger project than a team wiki
Skip it if: Teams under 100 people that want to compare prices and start a trial the same day. No public price list; buyers request a demo and a quote.
- 5
Notion ranks fifth because its search is strongest where the team already works, and it connects to Slack and GitHub to widen results. Enterprise search sits in the Business plan and is labeled beta. As a general workspace its knowledge-base features are secondary, so it works best when Notion is already your system of record.
Strong on
- Free plan at €0 per seat, so a team can test with real pages
- AI answers carry citations and respect existing page access
- Notion AI is in scope for SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001 reports
Weak on
- Enterprise search is marked beta and sits in the Business tier
- Zero data retention with LLM providers applies only to Enterprise workspaces
Skip it if: Companies whose documents mostly live in Confluence or SharePoint and do not plan to move. Enterprise search across connected apps is listed under Business, as a beta feature, as of October 2026.
- 6
Tettra ranks sixth because it is the lowest published price here, at $8 per user per month, and its AI bot answers inside Slack channels and DMs. It can also use existing Google Docs and PDFs. The product is narrow, with fewer connectors and fewer governance controls than the tools above it, which is the trade for the low price.
Strong on
- Lowest published seat price in this ranking, with a 30-day trial and no card
- AI bot answers repeat questions directly in Slack channels and direct messages
- API access and Google Workspace integration are included in Scaling
Weak on
- A 10-user minimum applies to Scaling, so very small teams pay for seats they lack
- SSO and custom integrations require an Enterprise quote past 250 licenses
Skip it if: Large organizations that need broad connector coverage and strict audit controls out of the box. Scaling plan, 30-day free trial without a card; annual billing earns two free months.
- 7
Coveo
Coveo ranks seventh because it is a relevance platform for builders, with generative answering, a passage retrieval API and an MCP server. It runs a free trial and bills by query volume, which suits customer-facing sites with traffic. It asks more of an implementation team than a finished employee tool does, so budget developer weeks.
Strong on
- Passage Retrieval API and Generative Answering can ground your own AI app
- Pricing scales with queries and indexed items on annual or three-year terms
- Supports pricing in CAD, EUR, GBP and AUD besides USD
Weak on
- Aimed at implementation teams, not at employees who just want a wiki
- Price depends on query volume, which is hard to forecast before launch
Skip it if: Small teams wanting an out-of-the-box internal knowledge base with no developer involvement. Priced in units that each include 100,000 queries per month; quotes via sales.
- 8
Elastic ranks eighth because it supplies the search engine, not an employee product. Elasticsearch combines text and vector search, offers serverless, hosted and self-managed deployment, and ships an Agent Builder for context-aware agents. A team must build the interface, connectors and permissions itself, which makes it the most flexible and most labor-intensive option in this ranking.
Strong on
- Three deployment modes: serverless cloud, hosted cloud and self-managed
- Free download for self-managed use, so a pilot costs engineering time only
- Semantic text fields embed content automatically at ingest time
Weak on
- The former Enterprise Search brand now sits inside Elasticsearch, so product names are confusing
- No finished employee assistant; permissions and interface are your build
Skip it if: Non-technical teams who need a working knowledge assistant without engineering effort. Self-managed Elasticsearch is a free download; Elastic Cloud has a free trial and metered pricing.
- 9
Bloomfire
Bloomfire ranks ninth because its pitch has shifted to an API-first Enterprise Intelligence Engine with modules for research, call center and field service, rather than a simple wiki. The fixed-scope quote, with no per-user charge, is unusual here. The terminology is heavy and the entry cost is hidden behind sales, so expect a long evaluation.
Strong on
- Quotes a fixed price based on scope, without user counts or consumption fees
- Offers MCP and API connections plus a headless architecture for developers
- Includes content guardrails, knowledge base health checks and moderation workflows
Weak on
- No public price or self-serve trial to test before talking to sales
- Product naming and module structure take time to map onto your needs
Skip it if: Small teams that want to read a price and start a free trial the same day. Fixed-price quote based on scope, with no consumption charges or user counts.
- 10
Moveworks
Moveworks ranks tenth because the site now leads with ServiceNow, and the product is positioned around ServiceNow workflows and employee service. Enterprise Search, an AI assistant and Tool Studio are real offerings, yet a buyer outside ServiceNow should ask how the acquisition changes support, pricing and integrations before choosing it over neutral options, and request references.
Strong on
- Combines Enterprise Search with an assistant that can act across business apps
- Tool Studio and a developer hub let teams build custom actions
- Backed by ServiceNow, which suits existing ServiceNow customers
Weak on
- ServiceNow acquisition makes independence and roadmap questions relevant for other buyers
- No published pricing, and its trust page did not load during our check
Skip it if: Companies without ServiceNow that want a neutral, quickly deployed knowledge base. No public pricing; a demo and quote are required.
- 11
Document360 ranks eleventh because it is a publishing tool for customer-facing documentation first, and a search layer second. Its Eddy AI covers search and answers, a writing agent and an MCP server, with a chatbot as an add-on. Quote-only pricing and a narrower reach across internal tools place it behind the enterprise search platforms above.
Strong on
- Eddy AI includes AI search and answers, a writing agent and an MCP server
- The vendor lists SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and GDPR readiness
- Knowledge bases can be public, private or mixed, with a choice of data center
Weak on
- Pricing is shown only after a quote request, so budgets are hard to compare
- The AI chatbot and screen-capture suite are paid add-ons
Skip it if: Companies that want one search box across Slack, drive and ticket data inside the whole workplace. No public prices; a short questionnaire leads to a quote based on accounts, workspaces and languages.
How these AI knowledge base and enterprise search tools were judged
How accurate are answers from an AI knowledge base?
Accuracy depends more on content freshness and permission handling than on the model. Slite and Guru both build verification workflows, where a page owner confirms an article is still correct, so the assistant answers from checked material. Glean, Moveworks and Onyx search across connected apps, which finds more but also surfaces stale chat threads and abandoned drafts. Onyx publishes its own EnterpriseRAG-Bench results, which are a vendor test, not an independent one. Check any tool with 20 real questions from your support or HR inbox, and count how many answers cite the right page, not how fluent they sound.
What does AI knowledge base software cost per user?
Published prices exist only at the small end. As of October 2026, Tettra lists $8 per user per month on its Scaling plan with a 10-user minimum, Slite lists $10 for Basic and $20 for Pro per user per month billed yearly, Onyx lists $20 per user per month for Business, and Notion lists €19.50 per member per month for Business, which includes its enterprise search in beta. Guru, Glean, Bloomfire and Moveworks sell by quote. Coveo prices in units of 100,000 queries per month, and Elastic sells cloud and self-managed deployments with its own metering.
Do enterprise search tools train AI models on company documents?
The vendors that state it say no. Slite says your data is never used to train AI models. Guru says the same on its pricing page, and Notion says neither it nor its AI providers train on customer data by default, with zero data retention at LLM providers on Enterprise. Onyx can run fully inside your own cloud or air-gapped, so documents and embeddings stay in your infrastructure. Glean lists SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and ISO 42001. For Coveo, Moveworks and Bloomfire, the policy wording was not checked in full for this ranking, so read it before signing.
How hard is it to leave an AI knowledge base?
Wikis lock you in through authored content and links. Moving 2,000 pages from Slite, Tettra or Notion means exporting, rewriting internal links and retraining habits, so test the export before you commit. Search layers lock in less on content, since your documents stay in their source apps, but they lock in through connectors, permission mappings and custom agents. Open source Onyx and self-managed Elastic lower the risk, because the index lives on infrastructure you control. Annual or multi-year contracts, which Coveo describes for enterprise deployments, matter more than technology once you pass a few hundred seats.
Which AI knowledge base fits a startup, an IT team or a regulated company?
A startup of 20 to 100 people that has no wiki yet should try Slite or Tettra, since both publish prices and run a free trial. A team that already lives in Notion can test its Business plan search before buying anything else. An IT or security group with data residency rules should look at Onyx for self-hosting. A company with 5,000 employees and many systems, and a budget for a rollout, belongs in the Glean and Moveworks demo queue. Engineering teams building a search box for customers should evaluate Coveo or Elastic.
How to choose an AI knowledge base and enterprise search tool in three steps
- Decide where the knowledge will live. Start by counting how many pages exist today and where they sit. If most knowledge is unwritten or buried in chat, a wiki such as Slite, Tettra or Notion gives you a place to put it, and someone must own it. If you already have thousands of documents spread over Confluence, Drive and ticketing, a search layer such as Glean, Moveworks or Onyx saves the writing work. Choose the category before comparing vendors, since a wiki and a search layer solve different problems and are priced differently.
- Test permissions with a sensitive question. Create two test accounts, one admin and one ordinary employee, and ask each the same question about something restricted, such as pay bands or an acquisition draft. A tool should refuse the second account and still cite sources for the first. Ask the vendor how permissions sync from source apps, how often, and what happens when someone changes teams. Notion, Onyx and Glean each state that answers respect existing access, but only a test in your own tenant shows how that behaves.
- Price the full rollout, not the seat. Add the seat price to the cost of connectors, admin time, content cleanup and any minimums. Tettra requires 10 users, Coveo bills by query volume, and Guru, Glean and Bloomfire quote custom packages. Ask each vendor for a three-year number at your headcount, and ask what happens at renewal. Include the person-hours your team will spend verifying pages, since a knowledge base that nobody maintains gives confident wrong answers within a quarter. Then compare the totals side by side on one sheet before any vendor call.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best AI knowledge base software in 2026?
Slite ranks first in this list for small and mid-sized teams, because it publishes prices from $10 per user per month, includes AI search in its entry plan and states SOC 2 Type II compliance. Onyx is first choice for self-hosting, and Glean suits large multi-app companies. The order is editorial, based on vendor pages read in October 2026.
What is the difference between a knowledge base and enterprise search?
A knowledge base is a place where people write and maintain pages, with AI answering from them. Enterprise search indexes content that already lives in other systems, such as Slack, Drive and Confluence, and answers across them. Many products now do both, but each leans one way. Slite starts as a wiki, while Glean and Moveworks start as search.
Is there a free AI knowledge base?
Several tools offer trials rather than permanent free plans. Slite has a 14-day trial without a credit card, and Tettra has a 30-day trial. Notion has a Free plan at €0 per seat, though its enterprise search sits in the Business plan. Onyx is open source and can be self-hosted, and Elastic can be downloaded and run yourself.
Can AI search respect who is allowed to see which document?
Yes, the better products do. Notion states that its AI can only use content a user already has access to, and Onyx says source permissions are enforced at query time. Glean describes permission-aware answers as a core feature. Verify with a test account in your own setup, because sync delays and misconfigured sources are where leaks happen.
Does Glean have public pricing?
No. As of October 2026, Glean's website does not list per-user prices, and buyers request a demo and a quote. Onyx publishes a $20 per user per month Business plan and runs a public comparison against Glean. Expect a larger annual commitment from Glean than from the wiki-style tools in this ranking.
Can I self-host an AI enterprise search tool?
Yes. Onyx is open source and describes running in your own cloud, on bare metal or fully air-gapped. Elasticsearch can be downloaded and run in self-managed form, though you assemble the employee-facing product yourself. Most others, including Slite, Tettra and Notion, are hosted services only. Slite states its hosting is in the EU.
How much does enterprise search cost for 500 employees?
It depends on the product class. At published list prices, 500 seats on Slite Pro would be about $10,000 per month billed yearly, and Onyx Business about the same. Glean, Guru, Moveworks and Bloomfire quote privately and often include onboarding services. Ask for a written quote that includes connectors and support, since seat prices are only part of the bill.
Which tools work with Slack and Microsoft Teams?
Tettra is built around an AI bot in Slack, and Onyx lists a Slack integration in its Business plan. Guru connects to Slack and Microsoft Teams among more than 100 integrations on its own site. Glean states more than 250 connectors. Check that the integration supports permission syncing and not only a link-out search box.