Is Brain a Dust alternative?

They overlap but solve different halves. Dust is a platform for building assistants over your data; Brain is the governance-and-proof spine any assistant reads through, with per-person access and a verifiable record. Plenty of teams build in one and govern through the other.

What can Brain prove that an assistant platform does not?

Brain filters every retrieval to what the asker is cleared to see before the model runs, and records each access in a content-blind, tamper-evident log an auditor can re-verify offline, optionally anchored on-chain. That holds regardless of which assistant or model is in front of it.

Yes. Build assistants where you like and point them at Brain's governed tools, so every answer is access-filtered and recorded, with your own model key.

Compare

Brain vs Dust

A platform for building custom AI assistants, and the governance-and-proof spine underneath any of them.

Dust is a platform for building and shipping custom AI assistants and agents over your connected company data. Brain is the spine any model or agent reads through: retrieval filtered to the asker's cleared sources before the model runs, a content-blind record you can re-verify offline, your own model key, and an optional on-chain anchor. They solve different halves of the same problem. Dust helps you build an assistant. Brain makes any assistant governed and provable. Plenty of teams want both.

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Why teams compare them

Every reader, one grid
An assistant is only as careful as the narrowest person using it. Brain checks each request against who is asking, whether that is a person or one of the assistants they built.
A record your auditor re-checks
Every retrieval lands in an append-only, content-blind record. It proves what happened without keeping the material, and a later edit shows up rather than passing quietly.
Where Dust is the better fit
If your priority is a polished studio for building and shipping custom assistants and agentic workflows over connected data, Dust is a genuinely strong product and a faster path to a working assistant.

The questions people actually ask about Dust

We are building our assistants in Dust. What would change?

Nothing about how you build them. Brain is not an assistant builder and does not want to be one.

What changes is what any assistant is allowed to reach. Brain filters every retrieval down to the asking person's cleared sources before the model sees a token, so the assistant's manners stop being the thing standing between a question and a salary column.

Fine, but Dust has spaces and roles already.

It does, and they are real: user, builder and admin roles, and private spaces that keep sensitive material out of the wrong hands.

Those govern the assistants built inside Dust. Brain sits a layer lower and governs whatever is in front of it, so the same policy and the same record hold for a Dust assistant, a coding agent and a person typing a question.

Alright. But our data is only in the tools we connected to Dust.

For the assistants, usually yes. For the company, rarely.

Brain connects the sources a team actually keeps and governs them identically, so an answer can cross a chat thread, a repository and a contract without any of them falling outside the policy on the way.

And the documents that are mostly fine but partly not?

Those are the awkward ones, and there are more of them than anybody expects.

Brain withholds the sensitive field rather than the file, so the assistant still answers from the useful ninety per cent, and the record says exactly what was held back and from whom.

At a glance

Brain compared with Dust, attribute by attribute.
Attribute	Brain	Dust
What it is	A governance-and-proof spine any model or agent reads through	A platform to build and deploy custom AI assistants over connected data
Per-person access	YesRetrieval filtered to the asker's cleared sources before the model runs, plus field-level redaction	YesRole-based access with user, builder and admin roles, and private spaces for sensitive data
Audit and proof	YesContent-blind record you re-verify offline, without taking the vendor's word, plus an optional on-chain anchor	PartlyEnterprise audit logging across the platform
Compliance posture	Per-tenant database isolation, bring your own model key	GDPR compliant, SOC 2 Type II certified, and enables HIPAA compliance
Hosting	Hosted, with per-tenant isolation	Regional hosting, with control over where data is held

Compared against publicly available information, last checked 20 September 2026. Products change. Tell us if something here is out of date: hello@heybrain.io

Who each one is for

Choose Brain if

Teams that want content-blind, provable governance for any AI or agent
Per-person filtering across company knowledge, with field-level redaction
Anyone who wants to bring their own model key and keep data and usage their own
Teams that want to start free and self-serve

Choose Dust if

Building and shipping custom AI assistants quickly
Teams that want a polished assistant-building studio
Agentic workflows assembled over connected data

What the research says

67%
of enterprise security teams say they are concerned about AI tools exposing sensitive information.
Metomic

Compared against publicly available information, last checked 20 September 2026. Products change. Tell us if something here is out of date: hello@heybrain.io

We are not rebuilding the assistants we already shipped.

You would not be. Brain is an MCP endpoint, so an assistant points at it the way it points at any other tool.

Build where you like. Give what you built a governed set of tools to read through, and every answer arrives access-filtered and recorded.

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Questions, answered

Is Brain a Dust alternative?: They overlap but solve different halves. Dust is a platform for building assistants over your data; Brain is the governance-and-proof spine any assistant reads through, with per-person access and a verifiable record. Plenty of teams build in one and govern through the other.
What can Brain prove that an assistant platform does not?: Brain filters every retrieval to what the asker is cleared to see before the model runs, and records each access in a content-blind, tamper-evident log an auditor can re-verify offline, optionally anchored on-chain. That holds regardless of which assistant or model is in front of it.
Can I use both?: Yes. Build assistants where you like and point them at Brain's governed tools, so every answer is access-filtered and recorded, with your own model key.