AI assistants and search decision
Hana AI
A capable engineer can build a narrow, usable Hana replacement for one workspace (chat bot + basic retrieval + actions) in a multi-week effort, but matching the vendor's product polish, reviews, and enterprise controls is costly and the vendor advantages favor keeping the paid service.
Visit website↗Not priced
No pricing page we fetched carried a figure, so there is nothing to compare against. The build side is still real.
$100one-off112 h to build
$150/mo6 h/mo upkeep
No published price to break even against.
Open-source builds that already do this
Every project below is open source and already does this job today. Fork one, self-host it, or take the parts you need - the build prompt further down assumes an empty file, and this is the shortcut past that. Licences differ; check the one on each card before you ship. All Hana AI alternatives, with the arithmetic →
What a replacement has to do
- User mentions bot in Google Chat → bot retrieves relevant chat/docs/context → bot summarizes and proposes next step → bot creates a reminder/task/poll in-thread or returns a grounded answer.
What it still won’t have
- Polished, native Google Chat UX and edge-case handling for threaded conversations
- Enterprise-grade admin controls, approvals, and source governance
- Operational reliability, SLAs, and support from the vendor
- Ongoing improvements, prompt engineering, and product polish
- Built-in action library and pre-authored prompt examples
What remains hard
- Brand trust
Rated 4.72/5 from 18 reviews on Google Workspace Marketplace .
- Execution quality
The first useful loop should take minutes, not a training session.
First-year cost
No published price
Hana AI does not publish a price we could read, so there is nothing to compare against. What building costs is below.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
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What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a minimal Hana-like service: use Node.js + Express for the backend, PostgreSQL for metadata, Redis for ephemeral state, and a small vector DB (e.g. pgvector) for retrieval; host on a single small cloud VM (or App Service). Core features in scope: (1) Google Workspace OAuth install flow and permissioned connectors to index Google Drive (Docs, Sheets, PDFs), (2) a Google Chat bot that listens for @mentions and posts structured in-thread replies, (3) ingestion pipeline to extract text, compute embeddings (OpenAI or compatible API), and store vectors, (4) a retrieval + summarization handler that returns evidence-backed answers and can create reminders/tasks/polls via the Chat API, (5) a simple admin dashboard to connect sources and control rollout. Out of scope: multi-tenant billing, enterprise compliance certifications, advanced prompt tuning, high-availability scaling, and polished UI/UX. Require: error handling for failed API calls and token refresh, request-level logging, end-to-end tests for the bot flow, and basic unit tests for ingestion and retrieval.
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Partly verdict base52
- An open-source build was found+5
- 4 cited sources+3
- Evidence score60
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time - so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 4
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productHana | Turn Any Google Chat Message Into the Next Step
- official pricingHana | Turn Any Google Chat Message Into the Next Step (pricing)
- open sourcekhoj-ai/khoj
- open sourcearc53/DocsGPT
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
