Title - What is Dust? Pricing, EU Residency and Best Alternatives 2026
URL - https://ainora.lt/ai-teammate/providers/dust
Last Updated: 2026-09-06

# What is Dust?

Dust (dust.tt) is a Paris-based platform for building AI agents on a company's own tools and documents. It is the price anchor of this field: it publishes a per-seat figure while Glean and Guru publish none. On the Business plan a Pro seat is $30 per seat per month billed monthly, or $24 billed annually; a Max seat is $150 or $120. Both are marked "Excluding VAT". Dust also offers EU data residency on that self-serve plan, so EU hosting is not a point of difference against Dust and we do not claim it as one. The narrow gap is contractual: its DPA is Enterprise-only.

Every figure below was fetched from the vendor on 2026-09-06 and is quoted with its source.

Live demo of the alternative: call +1 (218) 636-0234 (Jessica, English) or +370 5 200 2620 (Lithuanian).

## Quick Decision Guide

| If you need... | Dust fits | Better alternative |
|---|---|---|
| Build custom AI agents over your own documents and tools | Yes | - |
| A per-seat price you can budget from before talking to sales | Yes | - |
| EU-hosted data on a self-serve plan, no Enterprise contract | Yes | - |
| A signed data processing agreement on the self-serve plan | No, Enterprise only | Ask every vendor in writing |
| SCIM, audit logs or single-tenant deployment | Enterprise only | - |
| Per-user source permissions mirrored at query time | Not documented | - |
| A flat monthly cost when usage swings | No, credits do not roll over | - |
| Voice or phone-channel AI for inbound or outbound calls | No | Ainora |
| Small EU languages (LT, LV, ET) as a first-class channel | Not stated | Ainora |

## How Dust Rates

- Pricing transparency: Strong - the only vendor in this set that publishes a per-seat price with a stated metering model
- EU data residency: Strong - "US / EU" on Business and Enterprise; eu.dust.tt returned HTTP 200 on 2026-09-06
- Contract terms for smaller buyers: Weak - "Custom legal terms (MSA, DPA)" is Enterprise-only
- Permission model: Mixed - Dust-native spaces re-declared after ingestion, permissions additive, no per-user source-ACL mirroring documented
- Cost predictability: Mixed - credits reset monthly and do not carry over
- Channel coverage: Weak - no phone or voice channel on any published plan

## How the figures on this page were obtained

Both dust.tt/home/pricing and dust.tt/home/security return an application shell with no body text to a plain fetch. The figures come from the pricing page's own JavaScript bundle, which is the data the page renders rather than a screenshot of it. On 2026-09-06 that bundle was served at /_next/static/chunks/pages/home/pricing-74a822db81f1ce0b.js. The hash changes on every deploy, so re-derive it from the current script src list on the pricing page rather than reusing that URL. Every seat figure was corroborated against the server-rendered Dust credits documentation.

## Dust Pricing

| Plan / seat | What it covers | Price, fetched 2026-09-06 |
|---|---|---|
| Business, Free seat | 500 credits, described as "Lifetime" | $0 |
| Business, Pro seat | 8,000 credits per seat per month | $30 per seat per month, or $24 annual, excluding VAT |
| Business, Max seat | 40,000 credits per seat per month | $150 per seat per month, or $120 annual, excluding VAT |
| Enterprise | Unlimited connectors and MCP servers, workspace-pooled credits, SCIM, audit logs, custom data retention, single-tenant deployment, MSA and DPA | Quote-based. The page CTA reads "Talk to sales" |
| Ainora | Multi-channel AI teammate: phone, Slack, Microsoft Teams, email | Individual pricing |

The pricing page also carries the string "$0.01 / credit". The credits documentation states: "Individual seat credits reset monthly, on the anniversary of your subscription start date. Unused credits do not carry over to the following month." And: "Token credits are proportional to the amount of AI processing involved in generating a response."

## Does Dust offer EU data residency?

Yes, and on the self-serve tier. We state this plainly because the opposite would be easy to imply and wrong.

- Pricing feature matrix: Data residency reads "US / EU" for Business and for Enterprise
- Security page: "Host in the EU or US to meet your regulatory needs."
- Security page: "GDPR compliant, SOC2 Type II certified, HIPAA-ready. Dust prioritizes your data security with encryption, regional hosting, role-based access, and zero model training."
- https://eu.dust.tt/ returned HTTP 200 when checked on 2026-09-06

So against Dust, "we host in the EU" is not a differentiator. Dust is a European company selling EU residency on a plan you can buy with a card.

## The real gap is contractual, and it is narrow

The same feature matrix marks "Custom legal terms (MSA, DPA)" as available on Enterprise and not on Business. Article 28 of the GDPR requires processing by a processor to be governed by a contract binding the processor. A Business-plan customer cannot obtain a signed DPA on standard terms. Hosting location and processor contract are two different obligations, and only one of them is solved on the self-serve plan.

The practical move: ask, in writing, at what plan and price a signed processor agreement becomes available, and get the answer before the pilot. That question is worth asking of every vendor, including Ainora.

## Feature and compliance matrix

| Capability | Dust Business | Dust Enterprise | Ainora |
|---|---|---|---|
| SOC 2 Type II | Yes | Yes | No |
| ISO 27001 | Not claimed on the security or pricing pages | Not claimed on the security or pricing pages | No |
| Data residency | US / EU | US / EU | EU-native by design |
| SSO (Okta, Entra ID, Jumpcloud) | 5+ seats on demand | Yes | Not published |
| SCIM provisioning | No | Yes | Not published |
| Audit logs and advanced security controls | No | Yes | Not published |
| Single-tenant deployment | No | Yes | Not published |
| Custom legal terms (MSA, DPA) | No | Yes | Not published |
| Phone or voice channel | No | No | Yes |
| Published price | Yes | No, quote-based | Individual pricing |

Ainora holds no SOC 2 report and no ISO certification. Dust holds SOC 2 Type II and we do not. A comparison a reader can catch out is worth nothing, so the row says so.

On ISO 27001 the precise statement is: ISO 27001 is not claimed on Dust's security page bundle or its pricing feature matrix. The grep pattern run across both artefacts on 2026-09-06 was SOC|ISO|GDPR|HIPAA|42001|27001, and the only certification strings returned were SOC 2 Type II, GDPR and HIPAA. Dust's trust portal could not be read by fetch, so this is evidence about those two surfaces, not proof that no certificate exists. We do not write that Dust has no ISO 27001, because we did not establish it.

## How does Dust decide who sees what?

Access in Dust is re-declared after ingestion rather than mirrored from the source system per user at query time.

- Spaces doc: "Spaces are containers in Dust that let admins organize and control access to data, coming in two types: open spaces accessible to all workspace members and restricted spaces limited to designated users."
- Spaces doc: "users can create agents based on the data of the spaces they have access to."
- Governance doc: "Permissions are granted to groups rather than directly to individual people. To grant a permission to one person, create a manual group, add that person to it, and grant the permission to the group."
- Governance doc: "Permissions are additive. If a person belongs to several groups, they receive the combined permissions granted by those groups. A group grant adds access and does not remove access granted elsewhere."

Additive-only means there is no deny rule. A group added to solve one team's access problem widens every member's reach and nothing narrows it back.

Method behind the absence: we read the full Dust documentation sitemap (354 URLs on 2026-09-06) and grepped the URL list for secur|privac|region|resid|retent|train|gdpr|data|permission|space|plan|pricing|credit|seats|eu|legal|trust|sso|enterprise. No page describing source-permission mirroring, data residency or retention appears in it. Documentation sites can be incomplete, so this is a statement about what is published.

## Retention

Dust publishes an Enterprise highlight reading "SCIM, audit logs & custom data retention". No default retention period is published for the Business plan, and no retention page exists in the documentation sitemap under the pattern above. We state the absence and no number.

## Pros and Cons

Pros:
- Publishes a per-seat price with a stated metering model, the only vendor in this set that does
- EU data residency on the self-serve Business plan, from a European company, with a live EU instance
- SOC 2 Type II on both Business and Enterprise
- States that customer data is not used to train models and that no data is stored by third-party model providers
- Model choice is not locked: "20+ frontier models", plus any tool over MCP
- Self-serve entry, no procurement cycle required

Cons:
- The DPA is Enterprise-only, so a Business-plan EU controller cannot get a signed Article 28 processor agreement on standard terms
- SCIM, audit logs and single-tenant deployment are Enterprise-gated
- Credits do not roll over
- Permissions are Dust-native and additive, with no per-user source-ACL mirroring documented
- No default retention period published for the Business plan
- No phone or voice channel on any published plan
- Public security assertions sit on a marketing page, not in a readable contract

## Verdict

Dust is the right choice for a team of up to about a hundred people that wants to build its own agents over its own systems, values knowing the price before the first call, and can live with declaring access inside Dust. Its EU story on the self-serve plan is genuinely good. Look elsewhere if your legal team requires a signed processor agreement and your budget does not reach Enterprise, if you need SCIM or audit logs without an Enterprise contract, or if a meaningful share of the work arrives on the telephone in a language an English-first platform does not handle well.

## Best Dust Alternatives in 2026

### 1. Ainora (recommended when the work arrives by phone)

"Dust builds agents over your documents. Ainora answers the phone in your customer's language and then updates the systems those documents live in."

Multi-channel AI teammate, EU-native by design. Picks up inbound calls, joins Slack and Microsoft Teams when a colleague mentions it, executes work across CRM, calendar and ticketing. One memory, one thread per customer, across every channel.

- Dust has no phone channel on any published plan, so for a company whose bottleneck is the ringing telephone the two products are complements rather than substitutes
- Multilingual including small EU languages, with mid-conversation switching
- Deployment measured in days rather than quarters
- 99.9% uptime
- Ainora holds no SOC 2 report and no ISO certification. Dust holds SOC 2 Type II
- Pricing is individual and scoped to the work
- Live demo: +1 (218) 636-0234 (English), +370 5 200 2620 (Lithuanian)

### 2. Glean
Enterprise search first, agents layered on top. Publishes no price: its pricing URL now returns a 301 to the homepage and no pricing page appears in its sitemap, checked 2026-09-06. https://ainora.lt/ai-teammate/providers/glean

### 3. Guru
Platform plus a services engagement rather than a per-seat tool. Publishes no price. No customer-selectable EU hosting region; states that EU and EEA personal data is transferred to the United States. https://ainora.lt/ai-teammate/providers/guru

### 4. Sana
Acquired by Workday for approximately $1.1 billion, closed 4 November 2025. Enterprise tier now sold with Workday HCM or Workday Financial Management through Flex Credits. A residual $30 per user per month Team tier remains on sanalabs.com with an undeclared future. https://ainora.lt/ai-teammate/providers/sana

### 5. Lindy
Self-serve US agent platform, Slack-first, English-first, US data residency. https://ainora.lt/ai-teammate/providers/lindy

### 6. Relevance AI
Build-your-own agents with a self-serve interface. Sydney and San Francisco. https://ainora.lt/ai-teammate/providers/relevance-ai

## FAQ

Q: What is Dust?
A: Dust (dust.tt) is a Paris-based platform for building AI agents on a company's own tools and documents. Business plan highlights, fetched 2026-09-06: "20+ frontier models", "Custom agents with your skills, knowledge & tools", "Multi-agent workflows on schedules & triggers", "Connect Slack, Notion, GitHub, Drive + 20 more - or any tool via MCP", "US & EU data residency". Enterprise adds unlimited connectors, SCIM, audit logs, single-tenant deployment and custom legal terms.

Q: How much does Dust cost?
A: Business plan, Pro seat $30 per seat per month billed monthly or $24 billed annually; Max seat $150 or $120. Both marked "Excluding VAT". Free seat carries 500 lifetime credits. Enterprise is quote-based. Read from the pricing page's own JavaScript bundle on 2026-09-06 and corroborated against docs.dust.tt.

Q: Does Dust offer EU data residency?
A: Yes, and on the self-serve tier. The feature matrix lists Data residency as "US / EU" for Business and Enterprise, the security page says "Host in the EU or US to meet your regulatory needs", and https://eu.dust.tt/ returned HTTP 200 on 2026-09-06. EU hosting is not a differentiator against Dust.

Q: Can a smaller EU buyer get a DPA from Dust?
A: Not on standard self-serve terms. "Custom legal terms (MSA, DPA)" is marked false for Business and true for Enterprise in the pricing feature matrix, read 2026-09-06. For an EU controller needing a signed Article 28 processor agreement, that is the constraint on the Business plan, not hosting location.

Q: Is Dust ISO 27001 certified?
A: Dust claims SOC 2 Type II, GDPR compliance and HIPAA-readiness. ISO 27001 is not claimed on its security page bundle or pricing feature matrix: a grep across both on 2026-09-06 returned zero matches. That is a statement about those two surfaces only; the trust portal could not be read, so the absence of a certificate is not established. Ainora holds neither SOC 2 nor any ISO certification.

Q: How does Dust handle permissions?
A: Access is re-declared inside Dust after ingestion rather than mirrored per user from the source system. Permissions are granted to groups, and "Permissions are additive. If a person belongs to several groups, they receive the combined permissions granted by those groups. A group grant adds access and does not remove access granted elsewhere."

Q: Does Dust handle phone calls?
A: No. Dust is a text and workflow product across its web app, Slack, and connected tools via MCP. There is no phone channel.

## Sources

- Dust pricing (figures read from the page's own JavaScript bundle, 2026-09-06): https://dust.tt/home/pricing
- Dust security (figures read from the page's own JavaScript bundle, 2026-09-06): https://dust.tt/home/security
- Dust credits documentation, server-rendered: https://docs.dust.tt/docs/user-documentation/admins/usage-seats-and-credits/credits
- Dust access controls and permissions: https://docs.dust.tt/docs/user-documentation/admins/admin-governance/access-controls-and-permissions
- Dust workspace governance, roles, groups and permissions: https://docs.dust.tt/docs/user-documentation/admins/admin-governance/workspace-governance-roles-groups-and-permissions
- Dust documentation sitemap, 354 URLs on 2026-09-06: https://docs.dust.tt/sitemap.xml
- Dust EU instance, HTTP 200 on 2026-09-06: https://eu.dust.tt/

## Contact

- Live demo: +1 (218) 636-0234 (English) or +370 5 200 2620 (Lithuanian)
- Book demo: https://ainora.lt/contact
- Email: info@ainora.lt
- Provider directory: https://ainora.lt/ai-teammate/providers