LightOn vs Aleph Alpha (Kolibri, PhariaAI) vs Mistral AI vs Glean
A side-by-side look at scores, pricing and features — with RECATOOLS' ASEAN-aware verdict for each.
LightOn
EU-hosted enterprise search and document AI over your own files
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Mistral AI
Paris model lab with open weights, cheap APIs and the Vibe agent
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Glean
Permissions-aware enterprise AI search, assistant and agents
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| RECATOOLS Score | 6.1 / 10 | 6.6 / 10 | 8.4 / 10 | 7.8 / 10 |
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| API quality | ||||
| Pricing | Contact | Freemium | Freemium | Enterprise |
| Free tier | 15-day API test access with no commitment; no permanent plan without charge is currently published | Kolibri-1 open weights free to download and use under Apache 2.0 on Hugging Face; the platform, API and services are quoted | Vibe Free: limited messages, web searches and coding sessions, basic image generation, 100+ connectors; Apache 2.0 weights free to self-host | No free plan or self-serve trial. Evaluation is through a demo with Glean's sales team |
| Paid from | Custom quote: annual LightOn Suite licence plus usage; prices withdrawn Oct 2026 | Quoted on request, no price list is published | $14.99/month (Vibe Pro, excluding tax); API from $0.10 per million tokens | Custom quote: per-user monthly Enterprise Flex seats plus pooled FlexCredits, no list price |
| Has API | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Open source | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Free to use | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Users | — | — | 500k+ API users | $300M ARR as of May 2026 (customer count not officially disclosed |
| Founded | 2016 | 2019 | 2023 | 2021 |
| Maker | — | — | Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample, Timothee Lacroix | — |
| Verdict | LightOn is mid-pivot, and this page should be read that way. After a new chief executive arrived in July 2026, the company dropped generalist Paradigm positioning for document search: LightOn Core ingests messy files suc... |
Aleph Alpha sells control rather than benchmark leadership: models and a platform that German public bodies, defence and regulated industry can run on infrastructure they own. Kolibri, released in October 2026 with Apach... |
Mistral is a good choice when you want models you can host yourself or buy cheaply by the token: Small 4, Large 3 and the Ministral 3 models are Apache 2.0, and API rates sit well below most US frontier labs. The Vibe ag... |
Glean is a mature enterprise AI platform: permissions-aware search across more than 250 connectors, an assistant grounded in company data, and Glean Agents for multi-step work. It reported $300 million ARR in May 2026, a... |
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Comparisons cover up to 4 tools. Scores are RECATOOLS editorial assessments; verify current pricing on each vendor's site.