Agentic Index
Dust vs Ema (2026)
Build them or hire them.
Dust is a workspace platform where your teams build agents grounded on company data across Notion, Slack and Drive, self serve at 30 dollars per user a month with a free option. Ema ships prebuilt AI employees for HR, finance and operations, quoted through sales. Both document strong coverage, 11 of 14 each, so this is not a capability decision: it is whether you want a surface your people build on or roles that arrive already defined.
Choose Dust if
- You want your own teams building agents, and the knowledge is spread across your workspace tools.
- Published pricing and a free option let you start without a procurement cycle.
- Model flexibility and observability matter for agents your organization will keep changing.
Choose Ema if
- You want defined roles delivered rather than a platform to build them on.
- HR, finance and operations are the target functions and prebuilt depth there saves you months.
- Human oversight coverage is stronger, which matters when agents act inside those functions.
| At a glance | Dust | Ema |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Enterprise operations agent | Enterprise operations agent |
| Entry price | Pro $30/user/mo ($24 annual) · free option | Contact sales |
| Free / trial | Free option (no card, up to 5 users) + 15-day Pro trial | n/p |
| Pricing confidence | public exact | contact only |
| Feature | D Dust |
E Ema |
|---|---|---|
| Action & orchestration | ||
|
Integrations & Tool Calling Ability to connect agents to real systems through native integrations, OAuth-authenticated actions, custom tools, APIs, webhooks, or MCP-compatible tools. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Workflow Orchestration Ability to sequence, branch, retry, route, and combine deterministic workflow nodes with autonomous agent steps. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Triggers & Channel Coverage How agents wake up and where they work: schedules, webhooks, message events, CRM events, inbox events, chat, email, voice, and collaboration tools. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
| Knowledge & context | ||
|
Knowledge Grounding & RAG Ability to ground agent behavior in company data through document ingestion, retrieval, external knowledge APIs, semantic search, or RAG layers. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Memory & State Persistence Ability to persist context across a run, conversation, workflow, user, team, or longer-term memory layer. |
Partial | Partial |
| Control & trust | ||
|
Human Oversight & Guardrails Approval steps, consent checkpoints, escalation rules, structured guardrails, policy constraints, and pause/resume controls. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
|
Security, Identity & Governance RBAC, SSO, auditability, encryption, least-privilege tool access, compliance posture, and data handling policy. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Observability & Auditability Traces, logs, execution histories, metrics, audit events, and debugging detail for production agent behavior. |
Partial | Partial |
|
Deployment & Data Residency Deployment modes and options, including SaaS, dedicated cloud, VPC, on-prem, hybrid, local runtime, and self-hosting. |
Full / Explicit | Partial |
| Solution readiness | ||
|
Prebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Ready-made workflows, packaged employees, templates, blueprints, industry solutions, and role-specific agents that reduce time-to-value. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
| Platform extensibility | ||
|
Model Flexibility & Routing Ability to work across multiple foundation models, route tasks to different models, or let buyers bring their own providers and keys. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
APIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Composability layer: stable APIs, SDKs, MCP tool consumption/serving, custom tools, and integration into internal systems. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Testing, Debugging & Optimization Testing, debugging, scoring, retries, fallbacks, quality gates, and optimization loops for improving agent workflows before and after deployment. |
Partial | Partial |
| Specialist automation | ||
|
Browser & Computer Use Browser, desktop, or remote/local computer control for workflows that cannot be handled through stable APIs alone. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
Pricing snapshot
Sourced from the Index pricing dataset · open each vendor's profile for full detail.
| Pricing | D Dust |
E Ema |
|---|---|---|
|
Entry price Lowest public entry point |
Pro $30/user/mo ($24 annual) · free option | Contact sales |
|
Pricing confidence How public the numbers are |
Public — exact | Contact only |
|
Billing Primary billing axis |
seats | usage |
|
Variable cost Workload / overage exposure |
Medium variable cost | High variable cost |
|
Free tier / trial Try before you buy |
Free tierTrial
|
No free tier
|
|
Buying motion Self-serve vs sales call |
Mixed | Sales call |