The 7 best enterprise search solutions of 2025

Workflows today live across Slack threads, cloud drives, wikis, CRMs, and more. Hunting through all of them slows teams down. Enterprise search tools built with AI take on that sprawl, unifying knowledge and surfacing what matters in seconds.
Here are seven of the best enterprise search solutions to know in 2025.

The best enterprise search software

• Activeloop for enterprises needing one search layer across text, PDFs, and audio
• Glean for unified, employee-facing search/answers across 100+ apps
• Guru for enterprise search, tightly coupled with a living knowledge base
• Coveo for hybrid employees, self-service, and commerce search at scale
• Elastic Enterprise Search for engineering-driven teams needing flexible search
• IBM Watson Discovery for regulated industries with complex data
• Lucidworks Fusion for large enterprises needing customizable search

What do the top enterprise AI search solutions have in common?

Not all enterprise AI search tools are built the same, but the best ones tend to share a few key traits. These features make searching faster, easier, and far more useful for everyday work. Let’s look at what the best AI tools for enterprise search have in common.

• Accuracy and Relevance: Top solutions deliver precise, context-aware results by understanding natural language queries and interpreting the intent behind searches.
• Multimodal Search: They support multiple data types, including text, images, and audio, so no critical information is overlooked.
• User-Friendly Interface: A clean, intuitive interface helps users quickly find the information they need without requiring technical expertise.
• Integration Capabilities: Leading tools connect easily with various internal systems, cloud services, and productivity apps to centralize access to information.
• Automated Data Processing: The tools index and process large volumes of data automatically, reducing manual effort and improving response times.
• Security and Access Control: Enterprise search solutions include permission-aware search, encryption, and compliance features to protect sensitive data.
• Analytics and Insights: Built-in analytics allow organizations to track usage, optimize search performance, and identify knowledge gaps.

Quick Look at the Best Enterprise Search Software

Tool	Best For	Top Features	Pricing
Activeloop	Enterprises needing one search layer across all formats to surface hidden knowledge and boost productivity	Multimodal (text, audio, images), automated indexing, context-aware Q&A, SOC 2 Type II	Free and pro plans, plus custom pricing (enterprise)
Glean	Unified, employee-facing search/answers across 100+ apps	Knowledge graph, permission-aware search, AI summaries, 100+ integrations	Custom (enterprise plans, no public pricing)
Guru	Enterprise search tightly coupled with a living knowledge base and trust workflows	In-workflow answers (Slack/Teams/Browser), verification workflows, analytics	Starter: $6/user/mo; Builder: $12/user/mo; Expert: $24/user/mo
Coveo	Hybrid employee, self-service, and commerce search at scale	AI relevance, semantic search, smart snippets, Salesforce/MS integrations	Custom pricing (enterprise focus)
Elastic Enterprise Search	Engineering-driven teams that want flexible, customizable search	Built on Elasticsearch, distributed architecture, customizable ranking, open-source community	Free & open-source tier; Standard & Enterprise plans (custom)
IBM Watson Discovery	Compliance-conscious organizations with complex, regulated data	NLP + ML, Smart Document Understanding, sentiment analysis, visual tools	NLP + ML, Smart Document Understanding, sentiment analysis, visual tools
Lucidworks Fusion	Large enterprises needing customizable search and heavy tuning	Neural Hybrid Search, Smart Rank, role-based access, multilingual support	Custom pricing
AlphaSense	Finance, strategy, and research teams focused on market intelligence	Market data ingestion, generative AI insights, alerts, compliance-ready	Custom pricing (enterprise research focus)
GoSearch (GoLinks)	Lightweight unified search within the GoLinks ecosystem	Real-time indexing, semantic AI, permission-aware access, SOC 2 Type II	Custom pricing
Qatalog	Teams wanting a work hub with basic workplace search	Work hub + search, dashboards, integrations with cloud apps	Team: ~$9/user/mo; Enterprise: custom

Activeloop

Activeloop was designed for enterprises that need a reliable way to search across many types of data. As one of the top solutions for AI enterprise search, it combines text, images, and audio into a single, searchable layer.

The AI automatically processes and indexes files, removing the need for manual tagging or transcription. It delivers fast, accurate responses grounded in your data, making it easier for teams to uncover insights, make informed decisions, and boost productivity
Pros:

• Multimodal search across text, images, and audio in a single query
• Automated data indexing that eliminates the need for manual tagging or transcription
• High accuracy and speed when retrieving answers from large and varied datasets
• Context-aware responses that reference the most relevant sections of source material
  Cons:
• Works best with some initial data organization, but setup is still simpler than many enterprise search tools
• May require brief onboarding for teams new to multimodal search platforms, which can be provided

Best for: Organizations that need a unified way to search across varied data types and want accurate results without extra infrastructure overhead.

Activeloop’s Integrations

Activeloop links directly with the tools and platforms your team already uses, giving you access to search your data from one AI-powered interface. These integrations keep your information within easy reach.

• Communication: Integrate Activeloop with messaging and collaboration platforms to search and retrieve knowledge directly within your workflow.

  Integration with: Slack
  

• CRM & sales: Connect Activeloop to customer relationship management tools to access and analyze customer data efficiently.

  Integration with: Salesforce, HubSpot
  

• Knowledge management & documentation: Bring your knowledge bases and internal documents into Activeloop for faster, context-aware search.

  Integration with: Notion, Confluence
  

• File storage & cloud: Search and analyze files stored in cloud platforms without manual tagging or conversion.

  Integration with: Google Drive
  

• Learning & Training: Integrate with learning management systems to access training materials and educational content through AI-powered search.

  Integration with: LMS
  

Glean

Glean is a “workplace search + AI answers” platform built for mid-to-large organizations. It has consistently earned positive reviews and strong traction in the enterprise space, with users praising the time savings and relevant, permission-aware results it delivers.

By consolidating all workplace apps into a single, searchable system, Glean makes internal knowledge and resources far easier for employees to access when they need them most.

Pros:

• Integrates with 100+ workplace applications, including email, chat, and file storage
• Provides unified search for employee-facing content and resources
• Uses contextual signals (such as role or recent activity) to improve relevance of results
• Offers permission-aware search, respecting existing access controls across tools

Cons:

• Search quality depends heavily on the integrations enabled and the data sources connected
• Less suited for multimodal search across formats like images, video, or audio
• May require IT involvement for setup and ongoing management

Best for: Unified, employee-facing search and answers across hundreds of workplace apps.

Integrations: Works with a wide range of SaaS tools, including Google Workspace, Slack, Microsoft 365, Salesforce, and more.

Guru

Guru was created for teams that rely on a centralized knowledge base and need search to be tightly integrated with content creation and validation workflows. It emphasizes keeping internal knowledge current and trustworthy while making it accessible inside daily workflows.

Pros:

• Integrates directly with collaboration platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and browsers
• Provides trust and verification workflows to ensure knowledge stays accurate and up to date
• As one of the best enterprise search solutions, it offers a living knowledge base
• Contextual recommendations delivered within the tools employees already use

Cons:

• Less focused on multimodal search across varied formats, like audio or video
• May require consistent upkeep to maintain knowledge accuracy and trust levels

Best for: Teams looking for the best AI tools for enterprise search, tightly coupled with a living knowledge base and trust workflows.

Integrations: Works with collaboration tools, CRMs, and ticketing platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, and Zendesk.

Coveo

Coveo is designed for organizations that require scalable, AI-powered search capabilities across various platforms, including employee portals, self-service sites, and e-commerce environments. It integrates with multiple systems to provide a unified search experience.
It’s a mature, machine-learning–driven relevance platform that spans both internal and customer-facing search. With strong G2 sentiment and wide enterprise adoption, Coveo has become a trusted choice for companies looking to deliver more intelligent, connected search experiences.

Pros:

• Centralizes content from diverse sources into a single index
• Supports complex security models with role-based access controls
• Offers machine learning-driven relevance tuning and automatic query suggestions
• Provides analytics tools to monitor and optimize search performance

Cons:

• Implementation may require technical expertise for integration and customization
• Performance can be influenced by the complexity of the data sources and configurations

Best for: Hybrid employee, self-service, and commerce support at scale using

Integrations: Compatible with platforms like Salesforce, ServiceNow, Sitecore, Zendesk, and more.

Elastic Enterprise Search

With Elastic Enterprise Search, organizations can adapt search functionality to their needs while keeping it accessible for developers. It provides tools to design search experiences while giving engineering teams full control over indexing, relevance, and deployment.

Developer-friendly and flexible, it builds on Elasticsearch with options like App Search and Workplace Search. Backed by a large community, extensive know-how, and solid user feedback, Elastic remains a go-to choice for teams that want control and customization.

Pros:

• Open and flexible framework for building tailored search applications
• Robust APIs for indexing, querying, and customization
• Scales to handle large volumes of structured and unstructured data
• Offers deployment options across cloud, self-managed, or hybrid environments

Cons:

• Requires engineering expertise for setup, configuration, and optimization
• May involve higher maintenance compared to managed enterprise search SaaS options
  Best for: Teams with engineering support who want full control over their search environment.
  Integrations: Works with a broad ecosystem of connectors, APIs, and ingestion tools, supporting platforms like Google Drive, Microsoft 365, GitHub, and custom data sources.

IBM Watson Discovery

IBM Watson Discovery helps teams use natural language processing to uncover insights from extensive collections of unstructured data. It automates document understanding using tools like Smart Document Understanding and OCR, making sense of complex text structures and irregular formats.

Pros:

• Learns document layout with Smart Document Understanding, including headers, tables, and sections
• Handles poor text capture with OCR for low resolution, irregular fonts, and difficult lighting
• Uses foundation models for NLP to support faceted navigation and context-aware results
• Offers deployment options in cloud, on-premises, or hybrid environments

Cons:

• Requires specialized expertise for tuning and configuration
• Limited multimodal search across images, audio, and video

Best for: Compliance-conscious and analytics-driven teams using enterprise AI search solutions for deep text exploration and understanding.

Integrations: Connects with IBM Cloud services and can be embedded into assistants and workflows using its search integration capabilities like with IBM watsonx Assistant via APIs and Smart Document Understanding workflows.

Lucidworks Fusion

Lucidworks Fusion is built for organizations that need large-scale, customizable search systems with deep analytics and machine learning. It can process huge amounts of data, provide instant search results, and offer advanced customization and analytics for highly tailored deployments.

Pros:

• Scales to billions of records and millions of concurrent users with sub-second query responses.
• Applies AI and NLP at both ingest and query time for clustering, classification, intent interpretation, entity recognition, and sentiment analysis.
• Ingests and searches across diverse formats, including PDFs, Office files, JSON, XML, relational, and NoSQL databases.
• Offers high availability with failover mechanisms, access control (SAML, LDAP, encryption), cross-datacenter replication, and containerized cloud deployment

Cons:

• Requires substantial engineering expertise to configure, tune, and maintain
• Complexity and scale make it less approachable for simpler use cases

Best for: Big, bespoke deployments needing heavy tuning and tailored search behavior using enterprise search solutions.

Integrations: Fusion connects with a wide ecosystem, including Drupal, WordPress, Shopify, Adobe Experience Manager, Salesforce, ServiceNow, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and more.

Choosing the top AI solutions for enterprise search

When it comes to finding the right enterprise search solution, it really depends on what your team needs and the types of data you’re working with. Think about features like AI-powered insights, the ability to search across different formats, and how easily everything integrates with your existing tools.

Tools like Activeloop can help bring it all together, making complex data easier to navigate and giving your team the information they need, right when they need it.

FAQs

What is an enterprise search solution?

Think of it as your company’s own ChatGPT, but tailored to your internal world. An enterprise search solution lets you look through all of your files, systems, and tools at once. That could be a PDF, a spreadsheet, an email, or even a presentation buried in a shared drive. Instead of wasting time jumping between platforms and folders, you simply ask once and get the most relevant answer, no matter where the information lives.

How does AI improve enterprise search?

Traditional search is mostly about keyword matching, it only knows how to find exact words. AI takes things much further. With AI, the system actually understands context and intent, so you can ask a question in plain language, just like you’d ask a colleague, and it knows what you mean. This allows it to return not just matching documents, but the most relevant information across text, images, and even audio. The result is faster, smarter answers that feel intuitive and natural.

What types of data can enterprise search tools handle?

The short answer is: almost everything. Enterprise search tools can connect to structured data like databases, spreadsheets, and CRM records. They also handle unstructured content like PDFs, Word docs, slide decks, chat transcripts, and images. The real value lies in pulling all of this together into one place, so employees don’t have to think about where to look, they can just search once and get a complete picture.

Who benefits most from using an enterprise search solution?

Practically any team or organization dealing with large volumes of information. Knowledge workers save time by no longer digging through multiple systems. Customer support and sales teams can respond faster with the right information at hand. Leaders gain better insights to make decisions with confidence. In short, anyone who wants to reduce wasted time and improve productivity will find enterprise search to be a real game-changer.