Glean Platform vs IBM Watson Discovery comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Glean and IBM are both solutions in the Indexing and Search category. Glean is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.5, while IBM is ranked #10. Glean holds a 4.6% mindshare in IS, compared to IBM’s 3.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Glean users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Glean Platform

Read 12 Glean Platform reviews

3,757 Views
564 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM Watson Discovery

Read 4 IBM Watson Discovery reviews

766 Views
766 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Glean Platform

IBM Watson Discovery

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Glean Platform and IBM Watson Discovery based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Indexing and Search solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Glean Platform vs. IBM Watson Discovery Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Glean Platform vs. IBM Watson Discovery

September 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 917,433 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Glean Platform

Ranking in Indexing and Search

3rd

Average Rating

8.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Search as a Service (4th), AI Agent Builders (4th), AI Software Development (6th), AI Customer Support (5th)

IBM Watson Discovery

Ranking in Indexing and Search

10th

Average Rating

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Indexing and Search category, the mindshare of Glean Platform is 4.6%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Watson Discovery is 3.2%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Indexing and Search Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Glean Platform	4.6%
IBM Watson Discovery	3.2%
Other	92.2%

Indexing and Search

Featured Reviews

reviewer2810748

Analyst at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Creating low-code agents has transformed policy queries and now saves employees hours daily

What I would like to see is an ease by which I can have different connectors set up. Right now I have to do a lot of back and forth in order to have these connectors enabled. Having them by default on the platform would be very helpful for me. Also, when developing custom actions, having a developer portal where users can track the log of how the requests are being sent to custom endpoints created would be helpful because right now I do not have anything of that nature. It is just a final response that I get and it becomes very difficult to keep track of what is happening in the backend. Also, the latency that the platform offers is a little high right now. What I have noticed is that on a particular query, the user has to wait a long time in order to get responses. If there is a way to reduce this time and improve performance by decreasing the time for responses, that would be very good. I believe that the latency offered is a little high right now. If I can get prompt responses quickly, then that would be a real user experience enhancement. Also, what I have noticed is the problem that developers face when creating custom actions in Glean Platform, where we are not able to keep track of what is happening in the backend. A logger of sorts would be very good so that I can maintain an idea of what is happening in the backend. If that issue is resolved, along with also the issue of having custom connectors available from the start rather than going to Glean Platform and having conversations about the thing, then it would be very good. If these issues are resolved, then it would be a strong 10 out of 10 from me. But as of now, it will be an 8 out of 10. Glean Platform is a very capable platform. It is good for indexing documents and reducing manual workflows by incorporating an element of AI in it. Business usage can be increased as well. The one caveat is if there are developers who are creating actions on Glean Platform, then I must keep an eye on the logging that I have for the platform because interacting with the backend systems becomes very difficult using Glean Platform. Also, what I have noticed is that it is a real challenge in terms of latency as some of the responses may take a little while to load. However, what I have noticed is that the responses are usually very accurate, and so it is a trade-off between speed and accuracy. This is what I would advise to someone who is looking at Glean Platform.

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Geraldo Lima

Sales Director at Kukac

Stable, scalable, and has testing and conversational AI features

The total time it takes to deploy IBM Watson Discovery depends on the documents you'll be working with. For example, I was in a situation where I was working with some painting files and folders for a painting store. The store had PDF documents, but the information was mixed up, so I had to treat the documents on IBM Watson Discovery, and discovering and understanding each PDF file took longer. The process is more straightforward for plain documents, and you have to work with questions that will help IBM Watson Discovery understand the documents. The time to deploy the product depends on the quantity and type of documents you'll be working with.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Life became so easy when we started using Glean Platform."

"The best features Glean Platform offers are mostly the view, which I think is very good, and what I find most helpful about the view is that the user interface is very good, making it very easy to chat with the chatbot and get all the material that I want in the way that I need it."

"Glean Platform has positively impacted our organization, especially in terms of productivity for both us and our customers."

"Glean Platform has increased productivity by at least one hundred hours per week for my organization."

"The major impact that I have noticed is how business users are now being impacted and they are using the platform because they understand it easily."

"Productivity has really skyrocketed."

"Since I have joined, I have built around ninety agents with Glean Platform, and it has saved our organization around twenty-seven hours a week for each user, and it has also positively impacted our ARR."

"Glean Platform offers excellent user interface design and integration capabilities with other platforms."

More Glean Platform pros

"The most valuable feature of IBM Watson Discovery is testing, mainly because the product applies conversational AI, which means I can ask questions to get the information I want from a specific test area."

"Language support and the ability to build a natural language of speech recognition are the most valuable features."

"Being able to have some rules to extract the entities is valuable. The capability to crawl external sites and internal documents, and then draw internal information with external contents is also valuable."

"The most valuable features of IBM Watson Discovery are the integration with the rest of the Watson Suite and the Watson Assistant capability. If you use Watson Assistant, the ability for it to be able to determine the accuracy of your voice models and your voice response systems is a benefit."

"It has allowed us to provide longer service availability for support to users."

"Being able to have some rules to extract the entities is valuable."

Cons

"Sometimes Glean Platform gets slowed down."

"Also, the latency that the platform offers is a little high right now; what I have noticed is that on a particular query, the user has to wait a long time in order to get responses."

"I tried pulling in an architecture diagram of a workflow, and it pulled in some other image instead."

"I chose seven out of ten because if I could upload PDFs and have them analyzed, or have it integrate with my Gmail and help me go through my emails, that would be very useful, but I do not think it does that."

"Currently, Glean Platform does not integrate with Teams, Microsoft-owned platforms."

"There are multiple ways in which Glean Platform can be improved."

"Glean Platform can implement more models. The NLP creation could be a little faster, and while debugging is amazing, the routing also needs to provide higher quality outputs sometimes rather than extensive searching."

"In workflow agents, I would prefer that we do not use AI in every step and instead we have a toggle button or something which can configure whether AI should be used in this specific search field or not, or in this specific node or not, because currently it's using AI in all nodes which sometimes messes up the output."

More Glean Platform cons

"It needs a lot of memory. Our index is very big. It is around 100 gigabytes. So, we need more than 100 gigabytes of memory to use Watson."

"The support from IBM Watson Discovery is good but could improve to make it great."

"There are probably other chatbots out there that were built for specific use cases and are easier to deploy than this. Having said that, Watson is way more flexible. While it may require a greater amount of effort, it is not substantially more than some of the other ones that are kind of prebuilt for a specific use case. It would be good to have more prebuilt and specific use cases and specific business models. It can have better phone integration, even though I think that it is actually becoming less of an issue. Most people are online nowadays."

"There are probably other chatbots out there that were built for specific use cases and are easier to deploy than this."

"The pricing is an area for improvement in IBM Watson Discovery because the customer initially used the free version. Still, when he needed more questions and documents, he had to move to a different version, which was paid and cost $500 per month. That change in pricing made my company lose many customers."

"IBM Watson Discovery has moved to a newer version and it is very difficult to train the newer version."

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"IBM Watson Discovery is an expensive product."

"Cost-wise, it is very reasonable because it is cloud-based."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Outsourcing Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	9

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Glean Platform?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Glean Platform reveals limited options, and I wish there was more customization available.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Glean Platform?

In workflow agents, I would prefer that we do not use AI in every step and instead we have a toggle button or something which can configure whether AI should be used in this specific search field o...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Glean Platform?

I use Glean Platform as an enterprise search tool and I am a power user of agents, so I mostly use this on a day-to-day basis for random searches that I need to do about a company, a website, or if...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Glean Platform

October 2026

Download Glean Platform product report

Buyer's Guide

Indexing and Search

September 2026

Download IBM Watson Discovery product report

Also Known As

Glean Work AI Platform

No data available

Overview

Glean Platform harnesses cutting-edge technology to empower organizations, bridging data access gaps and enhancing productivity through its advanced search and knowledge capabilities.

Glean Platform transforms how organizations operate by integrating powerful search functions with intelligent knowledge management tools. It empowers users to locate and utilize information efficiently, fostering a more connected work environment. Its dynamic capabilities provide seamless integration, enabling users to access critical data swiftly, thus driving informed decision-making processes within teams. Designed for scalability, Glean Platform adapts to varying enterprise needs, ensuring customized solutions that align with business objectives.

What features does Glean Platform offer?

Intelligent Search: Delivers precise search results tailored to user queries.
Knowledge Graph: Visualizes connections between data for better insights.
Seamless Integration: Works with a wide range of existing tools and applications.
Security Controls: Protects data with robust security features.

What are user benefits and ROI?

Increased Productivity: Reduces time spent searching for information.
Enhanced Collaboration: Facilitates knowledge sharing across teams.
Scalability: Grows with the organization’s evolving needs.
Improved Decision-Making: Provides access to real-time information.

In industries like finance and healthcare, Glean Platform aids in streamlining operations by offering tailored data solutions that adhere to specific compliance standards. By facilitating efficient information retrieval, it supports critical tasks such as data analysis and regulatory reporting.

Glean

IBM Watson Discovery is an AI-powered search and text analytics platform that uncovers insights from large datasets. It is designed to enhance decision-making processes by streamlining data exploration and interpretation.

IBM Watson Discovery taps into advanced natural language processing to help businesses analyze unstructured data with precision. It empowers users to extract meaningful insights quickly, driving efficiency and informed strategy development. By integrating seamlessly into workflows, it allows organizations to derive value from hidden patterns and trends, optimizing processes and understanding customer needs in a dynamic environment.

What are the key features of IBM Watson Discovery?

Natural Language Processing: Enables understanding and analysis of text data in its original form.
Document Conversion: Transforms diverse document formats into searchable data.
Customizable Queries: Allows users to tailor search queries to fit specific needs.
Advanced Analytics: Offers deep insights through top-tier data analysis capabilities.
Integration and Extensibility: Seamlessly integrates with existing systems and supports scalability.

What ROI and benefits should users look for in reviews?

Enhanced Decision-Making: Facilitates well-informed decisions by providing accurate data insights.
Increased Efficiency: Streamlines data exploration, saving time and resources.
Scalability: Supports growth by expanding search and analytics capabilities.
Improved Customer Understanding: Gains insights into customer behavior and preferences.
Competitive Advantage: Provides a deeper market understanding and trend analysis.

Industries such as finance, healthcare, and retail implement IBM Watson Discovery to leverage AI-driven insights that tailor customer experiences, optimize operations, and enhance risk management. These sectors benefit from its ability to process vast amounts of unstructured data, drawing out actionable intelligence crucial for strategic development and operational refinement.

IBM

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Prudential, Bradesco, Woodside

Buyer's Guide

Glean Platform vs. IBM Watson Discovery

September 2026

Free Report: Glean Platform vs. IBM Watson Discovery

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