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Dust Alternatives in 2026
Published 2026-07-20 · Facts last verified 2026-07-20
The best Dust alternative depends on the job: Luffy if you want an AI coworker in Slack that ships finished work; Glean if enterprise-wide search is the real problem; Onyx if you need to self-host under an open-source license; Zapier Agents if breadth of app actions matters more than knowledge depth.
| Product | What it is | Best for | Pricing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Luffy (luffy.so) | An AI coworker that works inside Slack, connects to 900+ tools, and ships completed work: reports, follow-ups, research, enrichment, and automations with workspace memory. | Slack-first teams who want recurring work done, not another agent-building surface to maintain. | Published pricing model: a monthly work budget that scales with usage (luffy.so/pricing). |
| Dust | A platform for “human-agent collaboration”: teams build agents that work as co-contributors across company data and tools. | Teams with someone willing to own agent design and rollout across departments. | Publishes pricing: seat-based plus metered credits — free tier, Pro $24/seat/mo billed yearly, Max $120/seat/mo billed yearly, Enterprise via sales (as of July 2026). |
| Glean | Enterprise “Work AI” platform: indexes company apps and documents and answers questions grounded in that knowledge, with permission awareness. | Large organizations whose core pain is finding and synthesizing scattered internal knowledge. | Does not publish pricing; the pricing URL redirects to the homepage and quotes come via sales (as of July 2026). |
| Onyx | Open-source AI chat connected to your docs, apps, and people; the Community Edition is MIT-licensed and self-hostable, with 50+ built-in connectors. | Teams for whom self-hosting, data residency, or source availability is a hard requirement. | Self-hosted Community Edition is open source; the hosted Business plan is published at $20 per user/month billed annually, Enterprise via sales (as of July 2026). |
| Zapier Agents | Agents built on Zapier that carry out tasks across its app catalog (9,000+ apps), on command or on a schedule. | Teams whose priority is breadth of cross-app actions rather than depth of knowledge retrieval. | Published as an add-on metered by “activities”: free tier at 400 activities/month, Pro at $33.33/month billed annually, Enterprise via sales (as of July 2026). |
When to choose each
- Luffy (luffy.so): Choose Luffy when you want the output — the report, the follow-up, the updated sheet — without first designing and maintaining an agent for each workflow.
- Dust: Choose Dust when you want to build and tune your own agents, and a published per-seat price you can start on without a sales call.
- Glean: Choose Glean when enterprise-wide, permission-aware search across a large document estate is the problem and a procurement cycle is acceptable.
- Onyx: Choose Onyx when you must run the system on your own infrastructure — it is the only option here under an OSI-approved license.
- Zapier Agents: Choose Zapier Agents when the work is moving data and triggering actions across many SaaS tools you already automate with Zapier.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the main difference between Dust and Luffy?
- Dust gives you a platform to build agents; Luffy gives you a coworker that already works. With Dust someone designs, configures, and maintains agents per workflow. With Luffy you ask in Slack and get the finished work back. Choose by how much agent-building you want to own.
- Which Dust alternatives publish their pricing?
- As of July 2026, Dust, Onyx, Zapier Agents, and Luffy all publish a pricing model publicly. Glean does not — its pricing URL redirects to the homepage and figures come through sales. If self-serve evaluation matters, that difference is worth weighing early.
- Which Dust alternative can I self-host?
- Onyx. Its Community Edition is MIT-licensed and can be deployed on your own infrastructure. Dust, Glean, Zapier Agents, and Luffy are managed services. If data residency or source availability is a hard requirement, Onyx is the only option in this comparison that meets it.
- Is Dust or Zapier Agents better for automation?
- They optimize differently. Zapier Agents leans on the breadth of Zapier’s app catalog for cross-app actions. Dust leans on agents reasoning over your company data. If the work is mostly moving data between tools, Zapier fits; if it needs context from your documents, Dust fits better.
- Do these tools work inside Slack?
- To differing degrees — most offer some Slack integration, and you should verify the current depth against each vendor’s own docs. Luffy is built Slack-first: Slack is the primary interface where you assign work and receive it, rather than a notification channel bolted onto a separate web app.