# Dust vs HQ

Dust records 547,217 monthly visits with +1.8% month-over-month growth and Contact for Pricing pricing. HQ records 12,775 monthly visits with -1.1% growth and Freemium, Contact for Pricing pricing.

| Metric | [Dust](https://openaitools.app/tool/dust) | [HQ](https://openaitools.app/tool/hq) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| Website URL | https://dust.tt | https://hqforwork.com |
| Categories | AI Assistant, Large Language Models (LLMs), AI Workflow, AI Knowledge Management | AI Knowledge Base, AI Knowledge Management, AI Workflow, AI Agent |
| Pricing Model | Contact for Pricing | Freemium, Contact for Pricing |
| Monthly Visits | 547,217 | 12,775 |
| MoM Growth Rate | +1.8% | -1.1% |
| Primary Market | France | United States |
| Direct Visits | 456,919 | 6,569 |
| Review Score | 4.4 | 4.3 |
| Saved Count | 5 | 0 |
| Supported Platforms | Website | Website |

## Dust

Dust positions itself as 'multiplayer AI' for human-agent collaboration. Rather than giving each employee a private chatbot, it lets teams build agents that have shared access to company knowledge, connected tools, conversations and notifications, so work can move back and forth between people and AI. Agents can be reused across departments, and human review stays part of the loop where it matters.

The platform's differentiator is context. According to Dust, most AI tools can retrieve a single Slack message or CRM record, whereas its agents pull context together across Slack, CRM, documents and other company systems to answer with the full picture and then act on it. Over 70 connectors cover messaging, calendars, CRM, file storage, project management, data and finance tools, and agents can reach MCP servers through the same gateway.

Governance is a first-class feature. Dust offers a dual-layer permission model that separates what agents can access from who can use them, SCIM-synced groups, admin-gated overrides, audit logs and analytics for monitoring adoption, usage, cost and ROI. It is SOC 2 Type II certified, offers US or EU data residency and supports single-tenant deployment. Teams can build agents with 20+ frontier and open-source models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral and others, choosing the right model per workflow. The company says more than 3,000 organizations and 300,000+ agents run on the platform.

**Pricing & Plans:** Contact for pricing. Dust offers a free trial after signup, but its plans are oriented toward teams and enterprises with usage-based credits, volume pricing and dedicated support; you need to talk to sales for exact figures.

- **Agents with company context:** Connect 70+ tools including Slack, Notion, Google Drive, GitHub, Salesforce and Zendesk so agents answer with real company knowledge instead of generic guesses.
- **70+ connectors and MCP support:** Reach messaging, CRM, docs, project management, data, finance and MCP servers through one platform, so agents can act across systems rather than just chat.
- **Model flexibility:** Build agents with 20+ frontier and open-source models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Mistral, and pick the best model for each task.
- **AI-native governance:** A dual-layer permission model, SCIM-synced groups, admin-gated overrides, audit logs and usage analytics keep company data locked down while teams move fast.
- **Multiplayer collaboration:** People and agents share context, tools and notifications, so cross-functional workflows run with reusable skills and human review built in.

**Strengths:** Deep context gathering across 70+ enterprise connectors; Strong enterprise governance with permissions, audit logs and SOC 2 Type II; Model-agnostic: choose among 20+ frontier and open-source models; Shared, reusable agents that scale across departments

**Limitations:** Pricing is sales-led, so costs are hard to estimate before a demo; Setting up connectors and permissions takes real admin work; Best value comes with broad rollout, which is a heavier commitment for small teams

[Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/dust.md)

## HQ

HQ is built on a simple observation: when everyone uses AI individually, the gains stay individual. One person finds a prompt that works, it lives in their chat history, and the rest of the team starts from zero the next day. HQ is the shared layer underneath — a company brain that holds knowledge, skills, and workflows so that AI gets sharper the more the team uses it, and each person's breakthrough becomes everyone's baseline.

The mechanics are file-based and command-driven. Your active working directory in Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor points at the shared HQ context, and ChatGPT or Claude chat connects through MCP. Any prompt or workflow can be saved as a reusable slash command, and /hq-sync pushes it to the team. Knowledge — playbooks, brand guidelines, onboarding docs, competitive research — accumulates alongside them, so new projects inherit what the company already knows instead of onboarding from scratch.

Around that core, HQ adds the pieces teams usually stitch together themselves. HQ Bots bring persistent AI teammates into Slack and email that work from your skills and knowledge. HQ Deploy turns internal dashboards and tools into live links in a single command, with public, password-protected, or company-only access. A secrets manager stores API keys and credentials and injects them at runtime so they are never pasted around. HQ Cloud handles sync and team management, and the core is open source. Teams can start free with $10 of usage included monthly, and because the context layer is separate from the models, swapping AI vendors does not reset your setup.

**Pricing & Plans:** Freemium: start free with $10 of usage included every month and an open-source core. Team and cloud capabilities are paid, with details on the HQ pricing page and enterprise options available on request.

- **Reusable skills and slash commands:** Turn any prompt or workflow into a slash command and sync it to the whole team, so a win one person had becomes an action anyone can run.
- **Knowledge that compounds:** Decisions, docs, playbooks, and brand guidelines accumulate in HQ as your team works, so every new chat and every bot starts already informed.
- **Bots in Slack and email:** Deploy persistent AI teammates into Slack and email that use your team's skills and knowledge, acting with full context rather than from zero.
- **App deployment with one command:** Build dashboards, tools, and apps on shared context and ship a live link in one command, public, password-protected, or company-only.
- **Secrets management and MCP access:** API keys and logins are stored once and injected at runtime, and an MCP server connects company memory to ChatGPT and Claude chat.

**Strengths:** One shared context layer instead of per-person prompt history; Works across Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok; Skills and knowledge compound, so onboarding new teammates gets faster; Secrets are injected at runtime rather than pasted between people

**Limitations:** Concepts like skills, sync, and deploy have a learning curve for non-technical teams; The most valuable features assume you already use a coding assistant such as Claude Code or Cursor; Deploying bots and apps requires someone comfortable with secrets and integrations; Cloud sync and team features require buy-in from the whole company to pay off

[Profile (Markdown)](https://openaitools.app/tool/hq.md)

## Frequently Asked Questions

### How do Dust and HQ compare in monthly traffic?

Dust has 547,217 monthly visits, while HQ has 12,775. Traffic estimates describe audience size, not product quality.

### How do their growth rates compare?

Dust has a month-over-month growth rate of +1.8%; HQ has -1.1%.

### How does pricing compare?

Dust: Contact for Pricing. Contact for pricing. Dust offers a free trial after signup, but its plans are oriented toward teams and enterprises with usage-based credits, volume pricing and dedicated support; you need to talk to sales for exact figures. HQ: Freemium, Contact for Pricing. Freemium: start free with $10 of usage included every month and an open-source core. Team and cloud capabilities are paid, with details on the HQ pricing page and enterprise options available on request.

## Alternatives

| # | Tool Name | Monthly Visits | MoM Growth Rate | Pricing Model | Summary | Profile (Markdown) |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| 1 | [Notion](https://openaitools.app/tool/t) | 173,441,670 | +0.1% | Freemium | The AI workspace where teams and agents get work done together | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/t.md) |
| 2 | [Salesforce Agentforce (formerly Einstein)](https://openaitools.app/tool/salesforce-einstein) | 111,910,743 | +2.2% | Freemium | Integrates deeply with CRM ecosystems to automate enterprise workflows, but is tightly bound to the Salesforce software suite. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/salesforce-einstein.md) |
| 3 | [Glean](https://openaitools.app/tool/glean) | 3,301,875 | +0.1% | Contact for Pricing | Offers robust enterprise-wide permission-aware search and knowledge management, but with less focus on custom multi-model agent workflows. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/glean.md) |
| 4 | [Abacus.AI](https://openaitools.app/tool/abacus-ai) | 3,278,636 | -1.7% | Contact for Pricing | Combines multi-model chat assistants and automated machine learning optimization, but with a heavier focus on data science pipelines. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/abacus-ai.md) |
| 5 | [Taskade](https://openaitools.app/tool/taskade) | 539,714 | -9.4% | Freemium | Turn one prompt into live business apps, AI agents and automated workflows | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/taskade.md) |
| 6 | [Gumloop](https://openaitools.app/tool/gumloop) | 379,557 | -21.1% | Freemium, Paid, Contact for Pricing | Excels at visual no-code web scraping and data automation pipelines, but lacks Dust's dedicated internal knowledge base architecture. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/gumloop.md) |
| 7 | [Tines](https://openaitools.app/tool/tines) | 273,260 | +24.4% | Freemium, Contact for Pricing | A secure environment where teams build, deploy and govern AI agents, apps and automations | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/tines.md) |
| 8 | [TextCortex AI](https://openaitools.app/tool/textcortex-ai) | 150,520 | +12.7% | Freemium, Free Trial | No-code AI agents grounded in your company's knowledge | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/textcortex-ai.md) |
| 9 | [Kore.ai](https://openaitools.app/tool/kore-ai) | 143,328 | -18.2% | Contact for Pricing | Delivers enterprise-grade conversational AI and workflow automation, but focuses more heavily on customer service and enterprise contact centers. | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/kore-ai.md) |
| 10 | [Sim AI](https://openaitools.app/tool/sim-ai) | 140,953 | +20.6% | Freemium, Paid (per user/month), and Enterprise with custom pricing; self-hosting free under Apache 2.0 | Open-source workspace to build, deploy and govern AI agents | [.md](https://openaitools.app/tool/sim-ai.md) |

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Source: https://openaitools.app/compare/dust-vs-hq

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