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Comparison

Sidenote vs Glean

Both are cited AI assistants for the documents you work with. The difference is scale and setup: Glean is enterprise Work AI that indexes your whole company across your connected apps, while Sidenote is a per-person reader that rides along on whatever page or PDF you already have open — no admin rollout, no upload, and a free tier to start on your own.

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Sidenote

A reader that rides along in your browser, answering from the document you already have open.

Glean

Enterprise Work AI that indexes your whole company and answers across your connected apps.

The short answer

Should you use Sidenote or Glean?

Choose Sidenote if…

You want to read and question the specific document in front of you — a page, a private wiki, a PDF — with citations that scroll to the exact passage, starting free on your own with no IT project.

Choose Glean if…

You are an organisation that wants a permission-aware assistant indexing everything across Slack, Drive, Jira, Confluence, Salesforce and more, with mobile, desktop and sidebar apps for the whole workforce.

One indexes your entire company so anyone can search across it; the other reads the one document in front of you and shows you exactly where each answer came from.

Compared honestly

Sidenote vs Glean: feature by feature.

CapabilitySidenoteGlean
Reads the page or document you already have open Yes Partial
Works on private Confluence, Notion & SharePoint pages Yes Partial
Works on web articles & live web pages Yes Partial
Citations scroll & highlight the exact passage Yes No
Server-side citation check drops unsupported claims Yes No
One-click glossary of jargon & acronyms Yes No
Per-document Store / Discard retention control Yes No
No-login free tier Yes No
Connects to enterprise systems at scale Partial Yes
Native mobile apps No Yes
Native desktop app No Yes
Choice of multiple AI models Partial Yes

Several rows go to Glean, and we are not pretending otherwise — see Where Glean is the better tool below. Glean does have a browser extension (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari) that uses your current page alongside your connected company data, but it answers by drawing on that company-wide index rather than purely from the single document you have open, so those rows are marked partial. The cross-document row is powered by Sidenote Collections.

The core difference

Index the whole company, or read the document in front of you.

Glean is enterprise Work AI. An admin connects your apps — Slack, Google Drive, Jira, Confluence, SharePoint, Salesforce and many more — and Glean builds a permission-aware index so any employee can search and get cited answers across all of it, from a sidebar, mobile, or desktop app.

Sidenote is not a company-wide index. It sits in the browser side panel and answers from the single document you already have open, then scrolls the live page to the exact passage each claim came from and highlights it. There is nothing to roll out and a free tier to start on your own.

The difference in one example

Ask \"what is our incident escalation policy?\" Glean searches everything your company has connected and returns a cited answer with links to the source docs. Sidenote reads the exact Confluence page you already have open, answers, and highlights the sentence that proves it — no index, no rollout, right where you are reading.

Giving credit

Where Glean is the better tool.

Glean is a serious, well-built enterprise platform, and there are things it does that a per-person browser reader simply does not. If these are what you need, Glean is the stronger choice.

Enterprise search at scale

Glean indexes your connected apps into a permission-aware company brain, so anyone can search across Slack, Drive, Jira, Confluence and Salesforce at once. Sidenote reads the documents you personally open, not your whole organisation.

Apps everywhere you work

Native iOS and Android apps, macOS and Windows desktop apps, and browser extensions put Glean on every device. Sidenote is a desktop browser extension and web app only — there is no mobile or native desktop app.

Agents, API and model choice

An agent builder, a developer API and a choice of 35+ models let teams automate workflows on top of their data. Sidenote stays a focused reader rather than an automation platform.

FAQ

Sidenote vs Glean — common questions

For an individual who mainly wants to read and question the document in front of them, yes. Glean is an enterprise platform your company deploys to index everything across your connected apps; Sidenote is a per-person browser reader that answers from the page or PDF you already have open, with citations that scroll to the exact passage. If you need a company-wide search brain, Glean fits; if you want to read a specific document and verify every claim, Sidenote does.
Glean is built to search your connected internal company data — Slack, Drive, Jira, Confluence, SharePoint, Salesforce and similar — rather than acting as an open-web search engine. Sidenote is not a web search engine either, but it will read and answer questions about any web page or article you have open in your browser.
Both cite their sources. Glean returns cited answers with links to the internal documents it retrieved from your index. Sidenote cites the exact passage inside the document you are reading — click a citation and it scrolls the live page to that sentence and highlights it — and it drops any cited quote it cannot verify against the document before you see it.
No. Glean is an enterprise deployment: an admin connects your apps, configures permissions and rolls it out to seats on an annual contract. Sidenote installs as a browser extension in seconds, signs in with a magic link, and has a free tier — you can start on your own without involving IT.
No. Glean ships native iOS, Android, macOS and Windows apps plus browser extensions. Sidenote is a desktop browser extension (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Opera) and a web app — there is no mobile or native desktop app. If cross-device access for a whole workforce matters, Glean is the better fit.
Glean uses enterprise quote-based pricing with no public free tier — third-party reports put base licences at roughly 50 US dollars per user per month plus an AI add-on, with a minimum around 100 seats and annual contracts starting near 60,000 dollars. Glean does not publish these figures, so treat them as estimates. Sidenote is freemium: a free tier forever, a 7-day Pro trial with no card, and paid plans from 10 pounds a month.
Try it on the page you are on

Read anything. With citations.

Add Sidenote to Chrome and ask the document in front of you a question. No rollout, no upload, no new tab — just the answer, and the passage that proves it.

Add to Chrome — freeSee pricing

7-day Pro trial · No card required · Free tier forever