Glean, Dust, Copilot Studio or a custom agent: which one?

Written by the editorial team · 12 November 2026 · Updated12 November 2026

This comparison is written by a forward deployed agency, which appears in it; what it says about the others comes from their official pages, consulted on 12 November 2026. Glean, Dust and Copilot Studio are platforms you license or configure yourself. When you want the agents built, deployed and followed by engineers on your documents, with hosting you can name, we rank a custom agent from a forward deployed agency first.

You have documents spread across SharePoint, mailboxes and shared drives, and you want agents that find, summarise and draft from them. Four paths come up: Glean, Dust, Copilot Studio, or an agent built for you. The first three are platforms. The fourth is a build done by engineers who work with your team.

How we compared

“Not stated” means the pages we read do not say. Prices are those displayed on 12 November 2026 and they change.

1. Custom agent, by a forward deployed agency: for agents you want delivered, not configured

We publish this blog and we are one of the options compared. Three engineers from Télécom Paris, specialised in AI, build agents on your SharePoint, OneDrive or Dropbox folders. The agents read them in read-only mode, the folders are the ones you choose, and no file is kept. They cite their sources, write Word and PowerPoint files, and can also be reached from Claude, ChatGPT or Copilot.

The first call lasts 30 minutes, is free and carries no commitment. Access to your tools takes two clicks, without a password, and a first agent runs two weeks after the call. A dedicated contact follows. Nothing leaves without a person in your company validating it. Servers are in France, the database in the European Union, with one encryption key per company, and everything can be erased on request. For the French alternatives to Glean and Dust, see the page on French alternatives to Glean and Dust.

• Strength: your team does not have to learn a platform; engineers build and follow the agents.
• Strength: one subscription for the whole company, unlimited users, hosting you can name.
• Limit: a setup phase with the engineers comes before the first agents.
• Limit: three sources are supported today, SharePoint, OneDrive and Dropbox; other tools are connected as custom work.

2. Glean: for a large catalogue of connected tools

Glean’s home page says “Complete context that makes AI work at enterprise scale” and counts “275+” connections to work apps and data sources, with SharePoint among the logos. No price appears on the pages we read, only a “Get a demo” button. Its security page lists “ISO 42001, HIPAA, TX-RAMP Level 2, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, and GDPR”. It does not state where data is stored or whether it is used for training, and it links to a Trust Center whose text we could not read. A customer summary on that page mentions “the ability to host Glean within its own cloud tenant”.

• Strength: the connector catalogue and the list of certifications.
• Limit: no price displayed, and no training or region statement on the pages read.

3. Dust: for seat prices you can read and a choice of hosting

Dust describes itself as “Multiplayer AI for human-agent collaboration”. Its pricing page shows Pro at 24 € per seat a month billed yearly or 30 € monthly, with 8,000 credits per seat a month, and Max at 120 € billed yearly or 150 € monthly, all excluding VAT. Enterprise is on quote. The page describes a plan for “teams up to 100 people” and offers US and EU data residency on Business and Enterprise. Its security page says “Your data is never used to train models”, “Host in the EU or US to meet your regulatory needs” and “Data is encrypted with AES-256 at rest, TLS in transit”. The home page cites Google Drive among its connectors; SharePoint is not named on the pages we read.

• Strength: prices, hosting choice and training statement are all on the pages.
• Limit: SharePoint is not named, and the pricing page lists connectors per plan in two places that read differently, so confirm the limit of the plan you want.

4. Copilot Studio: for teams that build agents inside the Microsoft environment

Microsoft’s page says usage is metered in Copilot Credits, with prepaid packs of 25,000 credits at $200 a month or pay-as-you-go billed at the end of the month. It also states “An Azure subscription is required to use agents.” The documentation lists SharePoint as a knowledge source that “Connects to a SharePoint URL”, authenticated with the user’s Microsoft Entra ID, so the agent only surfaces content the user can access. On data, the documentation says that a tenant with an EU or EFTA billing address “will be in-scope for the EU Data Boundary if the customer also creates all of its environments within a geographic region inside the EU Data Boundary”, and that Copilot Studio “can be configured to access generative AI features in other areas, including when capacity is constrained.”

• Strength: SharePoint access follows the permissions of each user.
• Limit: someone on your side builds, tests and maintains the agents, and credit consumption varies with each action or response.
• Limit: the pages read do not say how customer data is used for training.

Our recommendation by case

• Your documents are in SharePoint, you have an Azure subscription and someone to build: Copilot Studio.
• You want visible seat prices and a choice between EU and US hosting: Dust, after checking the connector list for your tools.
• You run a large company with many tools to connect and are fine starting from a demo request: Glean.
• You want the agents built, deployed and followed for you, on your documents, with servers in France: a custom agent from a forward deployed agency, ours included. The page on data security details the hosting.

A platform and an agent can coexist: the agent reads your folders and the platform keeps serving the tools it already connects.