Choosing an enterprise Generative AI platform often comes down to a core strategic decision: do you empower business teams to build their own solutions with no-code tools, or do you equip your developers with a robust framework to create AI assistants? This choice separates two distinct philosophies in the GenAI landscape.

StackAI, a no-code/low-code AI orchestration platform, focuses on democratizing AI development, enabling operations, finance, and compliance teams to build custom workflows. In contrast, Dust offers a developer-first platform for building, deploying, and monitoring powerful AI assistants, emphasizing version control and structured development. This comparison examines their different approaches, features, and ideal use cases to help you decide which platform is the right fit.

Side-by-Side Comparison: StackAI vs. Dust

Core Philosophy and Approach

The fundamental difference between StackAI and Dust is who they empower to build with AI.

StackAI: The No-Code AI Builder for Business Teams

StackAI operates on the principle of accessibility and empowerment. It provides a visual, drag-and-drop canvas where users, regardless of their technical background, can build, test, and deploy custom AI applications. The platform orchestrates complex processes behind the scenes, allowing users to connect LLMs, internal knowledge bases, enterprise software like SharePoint, and custom logic into a coherent AI assistant workflow.

The goal is to put the power of AI creation directly into the hands of the people who understand the business problems best. This approach enables rapid prototyping and deployment of solutions for back-office automation, knowledge management, and customer support, reducing the dependency on engineering resources.

Dust: The Developer-First Assistant Platform

Dust is built by developers, for developers. Its philosophy is centered on providing a structured, reliable, and version-controlled environment for creating AI assistants. Instead of a purely visual builder, Dust uses declarative "app specifications"—code-based files that define an application's logic and data flow. This allows development teams to treat AI applications like any other software project, using tools like Git for version control and collaboration.

Dust’s mission is to enable product and engineering teams to build powerful assistants that are deeply integrated with a company’s internal knowledge sources, such as Notion, Slack, and Google Drive, and to manage them with professional-grade development practices.

Ease of Use and Target Audience

The intended user for each platform directly reflects its core philosophy.

StackAI is designed for business users. An operations manager can build a tool to automate claim processing, or a compliance officer can create an agent to review contracts against a regulatory database. The interface abstracts away complex coding, using intuitive nodes and visual connections. This no-code AI builder approach democratizes AI development across an organization.

Dust is built for technical teams. A developer uses Dust to write an app specification, connect it to data sources via API, and deploy it as an assistant in Slack. The platform requires an understanding of structured data, APIs, and code-based configuration. It is a powerful framework for engineers who need control and repeatability, not a general-purpose tool for the entire organization.

Customization and Deployment

Both platforms offer high degrees of customization, but through different means.

With StackAI, customization is visual and modular. A user has complete control over the AI workflow on the canvas. They can choose any LLM, connect to multiple data sources simultaneously, implement conditional logic, and chain dozens of steps to create a highly specific process. Once built, the application can be deployed through over ten different interfaces, including a web chatbot, an internal form, a batch processor, a Slack app, or a REST API. This versatility ensures the AI tool fits the specific use case.

With Dust, customization is achieved through code. Developers can define precise logic, manage data transformations, and build complex chains of execution within their app specifications. This offers immense power and control. Deployment is primarily focused on making assistants available within a company’s existing collaborative tools, like Slack, or through a dedicated web interface.

Use Cases in Practice

StackAI Use Cases

• A financial services firm builds an AI agent that connects to their CRM and internal documents to draft personalized client outreach emails, reducing manual work for advisors.

• A healthcare provider uses the on-premise AI deployment option to create a HIPAA-compliant chatbot that helps administrative staff find information in patient record summaries and internal protocols.

• A university creates a tool for its admissions team to process and categorize thousands of application essays based on custom criteria, saving hundreds of hours.

Dust Use Cases

• An engineering team builds a "support-bot" in Slack that can answer technical questions by searching through the company's Notion workspace and GitHub issues.

• A product team creates an assistant that helps new hires get up to speed by allowing them to ask questions about product specifications stored in Google Drive.

• A sales team works with developers to build an assistant that can generate summaries of customer conversations from transcripts stored in a shared folder.

Security and Enterprise Readiness

StackAI is built with enterprise security and compliance at its core. The platform is SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, and GDPR compliant, making it a trusted choice for regulated industries like healthcare and finance. A key differentiator is its on-premise AI deployment option, allowing organizations to run AI applications within their own private cloud for maximum data control. The company is founded and based entirely in the US.

Dust is also enterprise-ready and SOC 2 Type II compliant, demonstrating a strong commitment to security. Their developer-centric model and open-source components offer transparency, which is highly valued by technical teams. While they offer a self-hosting option, StackAI’s explicit HIPAA compliance gives it an advantage for organizations handling protected health information (PHI).

Pros & Cons

Final Verdict: Which GenAI Platform is Right for You?

Choosing between StackAI and Dust is not about determining which is "better," but which aligns with your organization's AI strategy and resources.

You should choose StackAI if:

Your goal is to empower your business units—from operations to legal—to build and deploy their own custom AI agents and automations. If you need to solve unique back-office problems, integrate with a wide range of enterprise systems, and require a flexible, secure platform with options for on-premise deployment and HIPAA compliance, StackAI is the logical choice.

You should choose Dust if:

Your AI initiatives are led by your engineering and product teams. If you value a developer-centric workflow with version-controlled, code-based applications and your primary goal is to build powerful assistants that leverage internal knowledge bases like Notion and Slack, Dust provides the ideal framework.

For organizations looking to achieve broad AI adoption by enabling their non-technical teams to automate processes and create their own tools, StackAI provides the secure, accessible, and powerful platform to make it happen.

👉 Request a demo today to see how StackAI can help you build and scale custom AI solutions for your enterprise.

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