# Contextual AI vs Google Vertex AI Search

**Leader by vioscaleAI score:** Contextual AI

| Attribute | Contextual AI | Google Vertex AI Search |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 52.8 (61% (medium)) | 47.2 (34% (low)) |
| content.faq | `[{"answer":"A unified platform that enables enterprises to rapidly build and deploy specialized AI agents capable of reasoning across complex enterprise data, technical documentation, and institutional knowledge to automate high-value tasks at scale with grounded, accurate responses. It is indexed under RAG Tools.","source":"https://contextual.ai/pricing","question":"What is Contextual AI?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Contextual AI is sold across 2 plans: On-demand and Enterprise. We have not confirmed a published price for every tier. There is no free tier. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://contextual.ai/pricing","question":"How much does Contextual AI cost?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Contextual AI supports the web and a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://contextual.ai/pricing","question":"What platforms does Contextual AI support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Not fully, on what we have confirmed. Contextual AI is offered as cloud / SaaS and hybrid, and a hybrid deployment usually means some components can run on your own infrastructure while the rest stays vendor-hosted. We have not confirmed a completely self-hosted option, so check with the vendor if that is a requirement.","source":"https://contextual.ai/pricing","question":"Can Contextual AI be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have independently confirmed SOC 2, HIPAA and GDPR for Contextual AI. Certifications we do not list are ones we have not been able to verify from public sources, which is not the same as Contextual AI not holding them. Always confirm compliance directly before you rely on it.","source":"https://contextual.ai/security/vulnerability-disclosure-program","question":"What security certifications does Contextual AI have?","confidence":0.7},{"answer":"Contextual AI is available worldwide. Its primary markets are the United States and the EU.","source":"https://contextual.ai/pricing","question":"Where is Contextual AI available?","confidence":0.75}]` | `[{"answer":"A comprehensive development platform that enables teams to rapidly create and scale autonomous agents powered by multiple AI model options, with built-in governance, enterprise data grounding, and integration capabilities. It is indexed under RAG Tools.","source":"https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai-search-and-conversation","question":"What is Google Vertex AI Search?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Google Vertex AI Search offers a free tier, so you can start without paying. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai-search-and-conversation","question":"Is Google Vertex AI Search free?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed browser-based access to Google Vertex AI Search. That is the extent of what we could verify from public sources, so it may well offer desktop or mobile clients we have not indexed.","source":"https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai-search-and-conversation","question":"What platforms does Google Vertex AI Search support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have only confirmed a cloud / SaaS deployment for Google Vertex AI Search, so it appears to be vendor-hosted. If a self-hosted option exists we have not found it documented publicly.","source":"https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai-search-and-conversation","question":"Can Google Vertex AI Search be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 8 integrations for Google Vertex AI Search, including Google Cloud Storage, Google Cloud Logging, Google Cloud Monitoring, BigQuery, Cloud Data Fusion, Cloud Dataflow, Cloud Composer and Service Directory. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai-search-and-conversation","question":"What does Google Vertex AI Search integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Google Vertex AI Search is available worldwide. Its primary market is the United States.","source":"https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai-search-and-conversation","question":"Where is Google Vertex AI Search available?","confidence":0.5}]` |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true}` | `{"cloud":true}` |
| description.long | A unified platform that enables enterprises to rapidly build and deploy specialized AI agents capable of reasoning across complex enterprise data, technical documentation, and institutional knowledge to automate high-value tasks at scale with grounded, accurate responses. | A Google-managed cloud solution that enables rapid development of search engines powered by generative AI and retrieval-augmented generation, supporting indexing and searching across websites and enterprise data. |
| features.capabilities | `{"open_source":false,"multimodal_rag":true,"citation_attribution":true,"llm_provider_agnostic":false,"reranking_integration":true,"built_in_rag_eval_metrics":true,"managed_ingestion_pipeline":true,"embedding_provider_agnostic":false,"multi_hop_agentic_retrieval":true}` | `{"multimodal_rag":true,"llm_provider_agnostic":true,"managed_ingestion_pipeline":true}` |
| integrations.count | 1 | 8 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"Google Cloud"}]` | `[{"name":"Google Cloud Storage"},{"name":"Google Cloud Logging"},{"name":"Google Cloud Monitoring"},{"name":"BigQuery"},{"name":"Cloud Data Fusion"},{"name":"Cloud Dataflow"},{"name":"Cloud Composer"},{"name":"Service Directory"},{"name":"Gemini","native":true}]` |
| market.availability | `{"primaryMarkets":["US","EU"],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` | `{"primaryMarkets":["US"],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"cli":true,"web":true}` | `{"web":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"hybrid","plans":[{"free":false,"name":"On-demand","summary":"Pay-as-you-go with $25 free credits","features":["Unlimited users","Document access entitlements","Usage analytics","Pipeline observability","Simple text document ingestion","Maximum 1 data integration","Query reformulation and decomposition","Document retrieval","Response generation with groundedness evaluation","Contextual SaaS deployment"],"commitment":"monthly","description":"Usage-based pricing with included free credits","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"free_credits":"$25"}},{"free":false,"name":"Enterprise","summary":"Custom pricing","features":["Unlimited users","User roles and admin permissions","Document access entitlements","SOC2 Type II compliance","HIPAA compliance","SAML/SSO","Role-based access control","Usage analytics","Pipeline observability","Uptime SLA","Complex document processing with charts and images","Unstructured data support","Structured data support","UI-based and continuous data ingestion","Unlimited data integrations","Dedicated support","Onboarding services","Custom development support","Custom data retention","Customer VPC or SaaS deployment"],"description":"Custom pricing with enterprise security and performance features","contactSales":true}],"addOns":[{"name":"Parse - Text Only","components":[{"per":{"qty":1000,"unit":"pages"},"kind":"metered","amount":3,"currency":"USD"}]},{"name":"Parse - Multimodal","components":[{"per":{"qty":1000,"unit":"pages"},"kind":"metered","amount":40,"currency":"USD"}]},{"name":"Rerank v2","components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"million tokens"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.05,"currency":"USD"}]},{"name":"Rerank v2 Mini","components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"million tokens"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.02,"currency":"USD"}]},{"name":"Generate - Input Tokens","components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"million tokens"},"kind":"metered","amount":3,"currency":"USD"}]},{"name":"Generate - Output Tokens","components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"million tokens"},"kind":"metered","amount":15,"currency":"USD"}]}],"summary":"On-demand usage-based pricing from $25 free credits, or Enterprise with custom pricing. Component APIs available separately.","currency":"USD","freeTier":false,"sourceUrl":"https://contextual.ai/pricing","retrievedAt":"2026-08-25T15:36:22.486Z","billingPeriods":["month"]}` | `{"type":"usage","summary":"Usage-based pricing for tools, storage, compute, and cloud resources. New customers receive $300 in free credits.","currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai-search-and-conversation","retrievedAt":"2026-09-06T13:44:28.320Z"}` |
| pricing.free_tier | no | yes |
| pricing.model | commercial | freemium |
| pricing.price_level | unknown | low |
| pricing.transparent | yes | no |
| security.disclosure_policy | yes | - |
| security.gdpr | yes | - |
| security.hipaa | yes | - |
| security.soc2 | yes | - |

## Capabilities (RAG Tools)

| Capability | Contextual AI | Google Vertex AI Search |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Capabilities** |  |  |
| Hybrid retrieval | - | - |
| Reranking integration | ✓ | - |
| Multi hop agentic retrieval | ✓ | - |
| Embedding provider agnostic | ✗ | - |
| LLM provider agnostic | ✗ | ✓ |
| Built in rag eval metrics | ✓ | - |
| Citation attribution | ✓ | - |
| Multimodal rag | ✓ | ✓ |
| Managed ingestion pipeline | ✓ | ✓ |
| Open source | ✗ | - |

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-10-16T20:15:28.621Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*