GC AI vs Harvey: how they compare in 2026

Chat answers questions and drafts documents, playbooks run first pass contract reviews, and Contract Intelligence extracts and reconciles terms across a whole portfolio. The Word add in redlines selected clauses or entire agreements, Automations rerun saved instructions on a schedule, and Easy Prompt rewrites a plain request into a detailed legal prompt before it runs. Chats can also draft and send email, build PowerPoint decks and bring earlier conversations back into a new one on request. Requests route across models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and xAI, with automatic fallback to another provider when one fails. Complex tasks run through a five step reasoning sequence of scoping, systematic review, pattern tracing, completeness accounting and reconciliation. Cohere's embedding model handles retrieval over uploaded files, and GC AI describes a 20,000 line system prompt tuned for concise, business focused answers. Files, projects, vaults and the skill library hold the material and instructions the models work from. Inside a project, each chat can read the project's files and its sibling chats.

Agents, Vault review tables, Knowledge research, Contract Intelligence review, Intake triage and Horizon Scanning all produce their output with language models. No document management or workflow system sits underneath that a firm would buy on its own. Vault stores matter documents, and its purpose is extraction, comparison and reporting across them.

Answers carry numbered citations that open the source with the quoted passage highlighted, so a lawyer can read the exact text behind each statement. Exact Quote works across uploaded files, web research and the legal databases, and an exported chat can include a citations section listing each quote and its source file. More than 14 million federal and state opinions, supplied by Midpage AI, back the case law answers. Each cited case opens in full in an Opinion Reader, with treatment flags where later history exists. The International Law database links each authority to its official portal, shows how often later decisions cite a case and marks some statutes as in force or not. The Research Agent ranks primary law ahead of secondary sources and uses reference sites such as Wikipedia only for background, never as citations. On GC AI's own In-House Legal Bench of 100 in house tasks, published in May 2026, GC AI passed 86.8% of attorney written criteria, against 79.8% for ChatGPT, 68.4% for Claude and 57.5% for Gemini. Its widest margins came on legal research, regulatory tracking and checklists, and only example tasks and answer keys are released. GC AI tells Word add in users to double check output because hallucinations and errors can occur.

In the February 2025 Vals Legal AI Report, a third party benchmark set against a lawyer baseline, Harvey Assistant was tested on six tasks. Its results ranged from 65.0 to 94.8 percent, and it beat the lawyer baseline on five. Document question answering reached 94.8 percent, 24.7 points above the baseline, with responses under a minute. Answers on scanned and badly formatted court transcripts reached 77.8 percent, 24.1 points above it. That study measured task accuracy rather than citation validity, and Harvey did not enter the later Vals study of citation authority. BigLaw Bench, Harvey's own benchmark, publishes its task categories and judging criteria on a public repository, with hallucination and source results by model. It defines a hallucination as a factual claim that a source of truth can disprove and tracks reasoning errors apart. Harvey reports that its systems hallucinate less often than the foundation models on legal tasks while giving longer answers. Every agent claim links to the source passage behind it, and the full BigLaw Bench dataset is available on request.

Agent Connectors split every app action into read tools and write tools. Reads default to Always allow, while writes and deletes default to Needs approval, so GC AI asks before an email goes out or a record changes. A member can set any tool to Always allow, Needs approval or Block, and each approval card offers Approve, Always approve or Deny, with the draft open for editing first. Admins set each connector to Disabled, Read only or Full access for everyone or for named members. Changes inside GC AI follow the same pattern. Creating, renaming, moving or deleting a project appears as a proposal to approve or deny, and files added from chat wait for approval. Contract Intelligence links an amendment to its parent agreement on its own only when the match is high confidence, and offers the rest as suggestions to confirm or dismiss. Any extracted value can be corrected by hand and later reverted to the AI value with its citations. Stakeholder seats give outside counsel and business partners a restricted vault chat. It answers factual questions about shared contracts and sends questions of legal or commercial judgment back to the legal team. Automations run unattended and deliver each result as a new chat for review, and the services agreement requires the customer to make sure users review output.

Agents show their plan before they run, so a lawyer can adjust the scope and approve the work before Harvey begins. While an agent works, Harvey brings the lawyer back in when a judgment call is needed, logs every step and cites a source for every claim. Intake applies routing rules the legal team defines to send each request to an approved agent, to Contract Intelligence or to a lawyer. Reports and reviews can run on a schedule, and admins govern access through roles and workspace permissions. The point at which an agent stops on its own, and what Harvey commits to when an agent's work is wrong, are not stated.

Eight customer stories name both the company and the lawyer. Tipalti's senior director of corporate legal reports 609 hours saved year to date. Snyk's senior managing counsel says time on core legal tasks fell by half or more, and Interface's head of compliance estimates major tasks take about half the time. Helix's chief privacy officer says productivity doubled, and Jasper's head of commercial legal says tasks that took an hour now take ten minutes. Arc'teryx, Columbia Sportswear and Viant Technology describe how their teams use the product without figures. Viant's chief legal officer, for example, runs HR and privacy questions through GC AI before deciding whether to call outside counsel. Customer logos in the trust center include Vercel, Wayfair, Bass Pro Shops, Eventbrite and Post Holdings. More than 2,100 legal teams in 53 countries use the product by GC AI's count, over 200 of them public companies, and more than 12 million contracts have been reviewed. A December 2025 ROI study of more than 100 active customers reports 14 hours saved per lawyer each week and outside counsel spend down 14%, while GC AI's FAQ puts that cut at 30%. The story figures are the quoted lawyers' own accounts, and an unnamed Fortune 500 technology company is cited as saving 400 hours a month on NDA review.

Customer stories name the firm and give figures. Reed Smith, with about 1,800 lawyers in 34 offices, reports 700 Harvey users a day, 1,400 a month and AI certification for every associate. Repsol's legal division started a pilot in January 2024 with 50 lawyers in 12 jurisdictions and reports cutting the time on one process by more than 90%. CMS reports 95% adoption. Other named customers include A&O Shearman, Gleiss Lutz, Cuatrecasas, Macfarlanes, KKR, PwC and Deutsche Telekom. The figures are usage counts and time savings as each customer reports them, with no stated method for how they were measured.

Section 4.9 of the services agreement bars GC AI from using customer data to train generative AI models, and section 5 binds both sides to confidentiality, with notice before any compelled disclosure. Customer data is logically separated from other customers' data, encrypted with AES-256 at rest and TLS 1.2 or higher in transit, and hosted in the United States. Its privilege guidance centers on United States v. Heppner, the February 2026 Southern District of New York ruling that a defendant's exchanges with a consumer AI tool were not privileged. GC AI points out that the court left room for tools used at counsel's direction under enforceable confidentiality terms. It tells lawyers they can treat GC AI like any trusted cloud tool, such as Google Workspace, Slack or Asana. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, Cohere and Reducto process customer content on zero retention terms. Claude Fable 5 is the exception, with Anthropic keeping its data for 30 days, and it stays off until an admin enables it. Users delete inputs and outputs whenever they choose, and an organization's full erasure follows a written request.

Neither Harvey nor its subprocessors may train any AI model on customer content or data, and model providers work under zero data retention. A firm can ask for a bespoke model trained on its own data and used only for that firm. Harvey syncs and enforces the firm's existing ethical wall policies and never creates, modifies or deletes walls, so the walls provider stays the system of record. Workspaces are logically separated, access follows roles, and data is deleted within 30 days of termination. If the law or a court compels disclosure, Harvey gives advance written notice where it is legally permitted. Attorney client privilege and work product are not addressed as such.

The product is sold to lawyers for in house legal work, and GC AI states that it does not give legal advice; it helps attorneys and their companies deliver advice more efficiently. The services agreement makes the customer responsible for having users review output and for meeting their own legal, regulatory, professional licensing and fiduciary duties. Exact Quote is presented as support for the lawyer's duty to verify sources. GC AI also quotes New York Formal Opinion 2024-5, which says a lawyer must review all generative AI output, citations included, before using it for a client or a tribunal. Lawyers are pointed to their local bar for current rules. Stakeholder seats keep non lawyers to factual questions about shared contracts and send judgment questions to the legal team. GC AI states that it assists with legal work in every jurisdiction, and users set the governing law in each request.

Output is not legal advice and may contain errors, misstatements or gaps, and the Platform Agreement calls the service a research tool. Harvey sells to lawyers, legal departments and professional services firms, and its agent pages leave the judgment on every task with the lawyer. Access credentials belong to one named user and may not be shared. Nothing addresses competence and supervision duties under professional rules, or the jurisdictions where the product may be used.

The In-House Legal Bench, published in May 2026, is how the company evaluates its own output. Six R&D attorneys wrote 100 in house tasks across ten categories, with answer keys averaging 12 criteria each. An LLM judge marks each criterion pass or fail, and attorneys reviewed a sample of its verdicts by hand. Pass rates are published by category, from 81.6% on summarizing documents to 91.4% on comparison and benchmarking, and GC AI says the results drive product changes. Claude Fable 5 led every other model in GC AI's suite on a benchmark of 100 demanding in house tasks, by GC AI's account. Admins on Team and Enterprise plans can switch off Anthropic, OpenAI or xAI models for the whole organization, and a settings table records who changed each provider and when. An AI Governance and Risk Management Policy sits in the trust center beside the security, conduct and acceptable use policies, shared on request. Who inside GC AI answers for model behavior is not stated.

ISO/IEC 42001:2023 certification covers Harvey's AI management system, and the Statement of Applicability published with it sets out the controls in scope. Its AIUC-1 certification, an AI security and safety standard, was conducted by Schellman and, in Harvey's account, validates its adversarial testing and AI security program. The trust center adds IRAP attestation, an EU AI Act item and AI Governance, AI Monitoring and AI Overview documents, with an AI Acceptable Use Policy among its policies. An AI Policy dated 26 December 2025 commits to testing the accuracy, reliability and suitability of the AI in the service and to change management for continuing legal compliance. No accountable owner is named, and nothing is published about uneven output across matter types or populations.

Version 4.0 of the data processing agreement, from June 2026, and an information security addendum set the data rules. GC AI processes personal data only on the customer's instructions. After the term ends it deletes all customer data within 30 days of a written request, at downstream vendors too, and clears backups within 90 days. Users can delete inputs and outputs from the app at any time, and data is kept only while the account is active. The subprocessor list names each provider with its purpose, data types and hosting location, and was last updated 18 September 2026. GC AI emails customers before adding or replacing one, allows 30 days to object, and lets the customer terminate if no solution is agreed within 90 days. A confirmed security incident is reported without undue delay, with cause, mitigation and updates as they become available. Sign in runs through WorkOS with SSO over SAML or OIDC, multifactor authentication and organization roles, and custom roles limit what each member can use. Production code is scanned daily for malware, a third party penetration test runs at least once a year, and backups are encrypted and replicated.

Customers choose what to upload, set their own retention policies and can delete data at any time. Within 30 days of termination, Harvey deletes remaining customer data and content unless told otherwise, and the DPA extends return or deletion to every subprocessor. Access runs on role based controls, logical workspace separation, SAML SSO, audit logs and IP allow listing. The Subprocessor List, updated 21 September 2026, names each provider with its purpose and location, and subscribers receive at least 30 days' notice of an addition with a right to object. Under the Security Addendum, Harvey notifies the customer of a security incident without undue delay and within 48 hours. It then reports the incident's nature, the investigation and the mitigation, and keeps relevant logs for at least a year.

The self serve services agreement, version 10.0 of 24 September 2026, sets the allocation of loss, and customers buying through an order form sign separate terms. Each party's liability is capped at the fees paid or payable for the affected services in the 12 months before the claim, or $100 if that is greater. Indirect and consequential losses are excluded. Gross negligence, willful misconduct and indemnity obligations sit outside the cap. Against third party claims that the service infringes intellectual property, GC AI defends the customer and pays agreed settlements and awarded damages. The indemnity excludes customer data, connected third party apps, modified output, third party web content and misuse. Its remedies run from securing the right to continue, to replacing the technology, to ending access with a refund of prepaid fees. The warranty covers professional, workmanlike service and a platform that materially performs as documented, with correction or a refund as the remedy. The agreement disclaims output, saying AI accuracy can never be guaranteed and that GC AI has no liability for use of or reliance on output. No insurance is stated.

The Platform Agreement, last updated 9 January 2026, sets out what Harvey stands behind. Section 8 indemnifies the customer against third party claims that the service infringes intellectual property. If a claim arises, Harvey may substitute the service, secure a license to continue, or terminate and refund prepaid fees. The indemnity excludes materials Harvey did not provide and output from input the customer knew was likely to infringe. Harvey warrants that the service conforms to its documentation, is delivered in a professional manner and complies with applicable law. It also commits to carry industry standard insurance with insurers rated A- or better by A.M. Best. Total liability is capped at the greater of 12 months of fees or $250,000. Payment, indemnity and claims the law will not let a contract limit, such as gross negligence, sit outside that cap. Data breach and confidentiality claims carry a separate cap of twice 12 months of fees or $500,000. After a security incident, the Security Addendum commits Harvey to an independent forensic investigation at its own cost. The agreement states that output is AI generated and may contain errors.

About 20 apps sit behind Agent Connectors, among them Gmail, Outlook, Google Drive, SharePoint, OneDrive, Dropbox, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Notion, Confluence, HubSpot, Asana, Linear, GitHub and Granola. Legal workflow systems include Ironclad, Agiloft and Checkbox, along with ServiceNow, Jira and the USPTO. Each member connects through OAuth, and GC AI acts only with that member's existing access in the source app. For Microsoft 365, GC AI publishes every delegated Graph permission it requests, from Mail.Send to Sites.ReadWrite.All, with the feature each one serves and why it needs that level. Checkbox, ServiceNow, Google Workspace and the USPTO have their own setup guides covering keys, OAuth apps and admin approval. Contract Intelligence syncs vaults from Google Drive, SharePoint, OneDrive, Dropbox or Ironclad, picking up new files every 15 minutes, with import rules and manual resync. The Word add in installs from AppSource or an XML manifest. A REST API, an MCP server for ChatGPT, Claude and Cursor, and the gcai command line tool expose chats, files, projects, playbooks, skills and vaults, with inference capped at 60 requests a minute per organization. A machine client such as Salesforce Agentforce can reach the MCP server with OAuth client credentials. No connector reaches iManage or NetDocuments.

Word, Outlook, Teams and SharePoint all run Harvey inside them, and Vault syncs documents from iManage, SharePoint and Google Drive. The iManage connection is a direct OAuth integration with an embedded web extension, and NetDocuments access follows the firm's existing permissions. Intake takes requests from email, Jira, Slack, ServiceNow, iManage, Google Drive and SharePoint and sends updates back to the source channel. Command Center syncs employee profiles through SCIM. Aderant and Ansarada integrations are documented in the trust center, and customers can build their own integrations, including through an MCP connector library. LexisNexis content reaches research through Ask LexisNexis.

The service runs on Google Cloud, with Vercel hosting the application and Cloudflare routing traffic. Each organization's data is logically separated, with its own access controls and encryption. Under the data processing agreement, customer personal data is hosted in the United States at all times, and GC AI states that all of its servers are in the United States. Every subprocessor, model providers included, lists the United States as its hosting location. Processing may happen elsewhere. The agreement lets GC AI and its subprocessors process personal data wherever they operate when needed to provide the service, with transfers covered by the Data Privacy Framework or standard contractual clauses. The United States is the only hosting location offered, on every plan.

Microsoft Azure hosts Harvey's cloud environment, with each customer's data logically separated and access set by role. Customers can keep data in region in the EU or Switzerland, the United States or Australia. Customers with localization needs can also have processing in the EU and Switzerland or in Australia, and that commitment extends to Harvey's subprocessors. The Subprocessor List gives each model provider's processing locations. Where Anthropic or Mistral models are not offered in a chosen region, Harvey reaches them through hosting platforms such as AWS Bedrock and Google Vertex. What changes between plans or tiers is not stated.

SOC 2 Type II certification, renewed through annual audits, sits alongside a SOC 3 report and a SOC 2 Type I report. GC AI's SafeBase trust center holds the SOC reports, a penetration test summary and policies covering AI governance, acceptable use, anti bribery and conduct. Documents are released through an access request, under a nondisclosure agreement. The information security addendum commits to third party penetration testing of a representative instance at least once a year, vulnerability ranking with CVSS and daily malware scanning of GC AI managed code. Business continuity plans are reviewed each year, and staff with access to customer data are background screened and trained on hire and annually. The reports themselves are released only through that request.

Schellman audits Harvey for SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 every year, and the 2026 audit and certification renewal are complete. The trust center also lists ISO 27701, ISO/IEC 42001, AIUC-1, IRAP, TX-RAMP, GDPR, CCPA and an EU AI Act item. It publishes Statements of Applicability for ISO 27001, 27701 and 42001. Schellman, NCC Group and Bishop Fox perform external audits, and third party penetration tests run every year. Reports, the CAIQ v4.0.3, SIG Core and SIG Lite questionnaires and the data flow and network diagrams are released through a self serve access request, with bulk download.

Anthropic's Claude family, OpenAI's models, Google's Gemini and xAI's Grok handle chat and analysis. Cohere's embedding model powers retrieval over files, and Reducto parses documents. Requests go to the model best suited to each task and fall back across providers during an outage, and users do not choose a model. Each provider appears on the subprocessor list with zero retention and United States hosting. Claude Fable 5 is the exception, since Anthropic keeps its data for 30 days for safety work, and it stays off until an admin accepts those terms. Admins on Team and Enterprise plans can switch off Anthropic, OpenAI or xAI, with each change logged by person and time, while Gemini cannot be switched off. Before adding or replacing a subprocessor, GC AI emails customers and gives them 30 days to object.

The Subprocessor List names ten AI providers with their processing locations, among them Microsoft, OpenAI, Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Anthropic and Mistral. ElevenLabs supplies voice services, DeepL machine translation, and Baseten and Fireworks.ai further model hosting. Claude and Gemini models run through Amazon Bedrock and Google Vertex AI, as Harvey's subprocessor FAQ explains. Model providers work under zero data retention, with no human review and no training on customer data. Under the DPA, customers who subscribe to the list receive notice at least 30 days before a new subprocessor is added and may object. Which model serves which feature is not stated.

An individual seat costs $500 a month, billed monthly or yearly by card, and can be bought without a sales call after a 14 day free trial. GC AI says individual pricing is standard and not negotiable. The seat includes unlimited chats and skills, the Word add in, Easy Prompt, analytics on usage and time saved, AI Academy and CLE courses, and the Slack community. Team plans are annual and priced on request, with enterprise SSO, a team skill library, Contract Intelligence, shared chats, solutions attorney support and one legal database. Enterprise pricing is custom. On individual seats, the case law and international law databases are add ons at an unpublished price, each with a one time 30 day trial. API and other usage based features draw on prepaid credits, priced in the platform at purchase and pooled across the organization. Credits expire at the end of the term, usage stops when they run out, and nothing is billed in arrears. Fees are non refundable and renew at the current published price.

Fees are set in each customer's order form and invoiced under the Platform Agreement. If an order form is terminated early under the agreement, Harvey refunds a pro rata share of prepaid unused fees. Undisputed late amounts carry a finance charge at the Federal Funds Rate plus 1.5% a year. No rate, plan, tier or unit of charge appears on Harvey's site, and buying starts with a contact sales form.

In house legal departments are the only market, from solo and fractional general counsel on the individual plan to enterprise legal teams. Customers range from startups to Fortune 500 companies across technology, finance, retail and apparel, manufacturing and healthcare, including Hitachi, Vercel, Snyk, Tipalti, Gusto, Arc'teryx, Columbia Sportswear and Wayfair. The named work runs from commercial contracts, NDAs, DPAs and MSAs to privacy, employment, corporate governance, board materials, regulatory research and portfolio contract review. Ready made playbooks cover NDAs, DPAs and MSAs for SaaS and for commercial use. A playbook run can take the deal stage into account when it suggests fallback language, and it works on drafts that carry tracked changes from earlier rounds. Generalist in house lawyers are the best fit, GC AI says, and it will recommend other platforms to specialized practices. Some teams, it notes, keep a traditional research seat for exhaustive litigation research. The legal databases cover United States federal, state and specialized courts and more than 30 jurisdictions in Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America.

Large law firms, mid sized firms, in house legal departments and professional services firms are the stated buyers. Industry pages cover healthcare and life sciences, technology, energy and utilities, and media, entertainment and telecom. More than 200,000 lawyers at over 3,500 organizations in more than 85 countries use Harvey, including 80% of Am Law 100 firms and five of the Fortune 10. Solutions pages address litigation, transactional work and innovation teams, and research spans legal, regulatory and tax questions across jurisdictions. Firm sizes or practice areas the product is not built for are not stated.