Workday Sana: What It Is, What It Costs, Who Can Use It
Sana is Workday’s AI assistant. It sits across Workday’s HR and finance apps, answers questions with sources, takes actions like booking time off, and runs agents in the background. Since Workday Rising on October 13, 2026, it is also the Workday Home screen employees land on. Its Enterprise edition reaches beyond Workday into Gmail, Outlook, Slack, Salesforce and other apps. It is sold to Workday customers and paid for with Workday’s Flex Credits.
“Sana” can mean three related things:
- Sana Labs, the Stockholm AI company founded by Joel Hellermark, which Workday bought.
- Sana from Workday, the assistant built into Workday, which this guide is mostly about.
- Sana Agents, Sana Labs’ original standalone assistant at sana.ai, which is still sold directly.
Where Sana came from
Sana Labs built two products: Sana Learn, a learning platform, and Sana Agents, an AI assistant for company knowledge and meetings. Workday agreed to buy the company for about $1.1 billion in September 2025 and closed the deal on November 4, 2025. Hellermark became Workday’s chief AI officer.
On March 17, 2026, Workday relaunched it as Sana from Workday, replacing its earlier Illuminate AI branding. At Workday Rising 2026, Sana became the Workday Home and the layer that coordinates all of Workday’s AI agents.
What Sana does
Workday groups Sana’s abilities into four verbs:
- Find. Answers with citations, drawn from Workday and connected systems.
- Act. Carries out tasks across connected systems within each person’s existing permissions.
- Build. Produces dashboards, summaries and documents.
- Automate. Sets up no-code, multi-step workflows that agents run behind the scenes. Workday’s example: “review my email inbox for receipts, check them against policy, and send me a report to approve before submitting.”
Since October 13, the Home screen builds itself around the task. Ask to schedule a meeting or request time off and Sana shows a live calendar or date picker, then completes the request once you confirm. It uses Jev, a model from TypeSafe AI, to draw those forms, calendars and approval cards in real time.
The Sana editions
| Edition | What it covers | Who gets it |
|---|---|---|
| Sana for Workday | The AI interface across Workday’s apps | All Workday customers, through Flex Credits |
| Sana Self-Service Agent | 300+ skills for pay, time and absence questions and requests | All Workday customers, through Flex Credits |
| Sana Enterprise | Extends Sana to other business apps | With Workday HCM or Financial Management, or through Flex Credits |
| Sana Concierge | HR and IT service agent, announced at Rising 2026 | Early adopters now; general availability Q1 2027 |
| Sana Agents (sana.ai) | The original standalone assistant, with meeting recording and knowledge search | Sold directly; custom pricing |
What Sana connects to
At launch, Sana Enterprise listed connectors for Box, Confluence, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Contacts, Google Drive, Google Tasks, Jira, Linear, Microsoft Outlook Calendar, Microsoft Outlook Email, Miro, Notion, Salesforce, ServiceNow, SharePoint, Slack and Zoom. With the calendar connectors, Workday says employees can “check availability and schedule meetings in Outlook or Google Calendar.”
Sana also goes where employees already work. Workday says it runs inside Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini Enterprise and Microsoft Copilot, as well as Microsoft Teams and Slack, per Computerworld. Those tools never get raw Workday data: requests run through Sana, which applies the company’s permissions and approvals. In Claude it goes furthest: a Sana in Claude plugin, from a new Workday and Anthropic partnership, lets employees analyze Workday data and take action there, confirming every change. It is in early access, with general availability expected in late 2026; see Claude + Workday.
What Sana costs
For Workday customers, Sana runs on Flex Credits. Workday describes Flex Credits as one credit that covers its AI, including Workday-built agents, Data Cloud and Sana. Every subscription includes an annual allotment, customers buy more as usage grows, and agents are metered when they complete an action rather than per question or per token. For Sana for Workday and the Self-Service Agent, Workday promised “no extra license, no separate paywall.”
What Workday doesn’t publish is a rate card: how many credits an action takes, or what an agent running in the background all month will use. That comes from your Workday account team.
For Sana Agents bought directly, Sana’s pricing page now lists a single Enterprise plan at custom pricing. A December 2025 help-center article still describes Free and Team tiers, with the Free tier capped at 10 meetings and 20 chat messages per user a month, but neither appears on the pricing page.
Who Sana is for
Sana is built for the more than 11,500 organizations that run Workday, which Workday says includes over 65% of the Fortune 500. That shapes the limits:
- It comes with a Workday contract. The Workday editions are bought and switched on through Workday, by your administrators.
- HR and finance come first. The deepest skills are pay, time, absence, approvals and planning. The connectors to email and other apps are an Enterprise layer on top.
- The price of heavy use is opaque. Credits are metered per action with no public rate.
- Much of the agent work is 2027. Concierge and three of the four new autopilot agents reach general availability or early adopters next year.
If your company runs Workday, try Sana first: it already has your HR and finance data and permissions. If it doesn’t, Sana isn’t something you can sign up for and use this afternoon.
Sana alternatives for teams without Workday
1. Carly
Carly gives a small or mid-sized team the part of Sana most people want, an assistant that finishes the work, on the email and calendars they already use.
- It starts on its own. A new email, a form submission or a finished call starts a workflow. Nobody has to open a chat.
- Every account at once. Several Gmail and Outlook accounts, shared mailboxes included, and scheduling against every calendar. Booking pages and group scheduling are free.
- Agents with their own inbox. Build AI agents with their own name, email address, instructions and memory for recruiting, client intake or billing.
- Approval when it matters. Set approval steps before anything sends.
- Calls and texts. Carly can answer your business line, text back and book the caller.
- Use it from your AI chat. Add the Carly connector to Claude or ChatGPT, the same places Workday is putting Sana.
Carly connects to thousands of apps, including Slack, HubSpot, BambooHR and Rippling.
Best for: teams that want an AI assistant to handle email, scheduling and follow-up without an enterprise HR contract
Pricing: Free Zapier-style workflows; AI agents from $35/month
Limitations: Carly isn’t an HR system of record. It works alongside your HR and payroll tools rather than replacing them, and a managed Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 tenant may need administrator approval before accounts connect.
2. Microsoft 365 Copilot
If your company already lives in Microsoft 365, Copilot is the in-house option: chat in Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams, plus always-on agents through Copilot Autopilot, now in private preview.
Pricing: $30 per user per month, with advanced agents billed in credits on top
Limitations: It stays inside one company’s Microsoft 365 tenant, so Gmail and a second organization’s mailbox are out. See Microsoft Copilot alternatives.
3. ChatGPT Business
The general-purpose choice for teams that want one AI workspace with Gmail and Outlook connectors and shared projects. Our guide to ChatGPT Business covers the plan in detail.
Pricing: $25 per seat per month, or $20 billed annually
Limitations: Work starts when someone opens a chat. A CRM update or a new form doesn’t start ChatGPT on its own.
4. Glean
Enterprise AI search and agents across Slack, Google Drive, Notion, Jira, Salesforce and other company apps. It is the closest match to Sana’s “Find” side outside Workday.
Pricing: Sales-led, not published
Limitations: Built for larger companies, with an implementation project to match. More in Glean alternatives.
FAQ
What is Sana in Workday? Sana is Workday’s AI assistant and, since October 13, 2026, the Workday Home screen. It answers questions, completes tasks like time-off requests, builds documents and dashboards, and coordinates Workday’s AI agents.
Is Workday Sana the same as Sana AI or Sana Labs? Same company. Sana Labs built the Sana AI assistant, now sold directly as Sana Agents. Workday bought Sana Labs in 2025 and built its assistant, Sana from Workday, on that technology.
Is Sana free for Workday customers? Sana for Workday and the Self-Service Agent come with no extra license. They run on Flex Credits, which every Workday subscription includes an allotment of, with more available to buy. Heavier agent use draws down credits.
Can I use Sana without Workday? The Workday editions need a Workday subscription. Sana Agents, the standalone product, is sold directly with custom enterprise pricing.
Does Sana work with Gmail and Outlook? Sana Enterprise has connectors for Gmail, Outlook email, Google Calendar and Outlook Calendar, and can check availability and schedule meetings. It’s sold alongside Workday.
What’s the best Sana alternative for a small business? Carly. It runs on the Gmail and Outlook accounts you already have, starts work on its own when email, forms or calls come in, and starts at free Zapier-style workflows, with AI agents from $35/month.
More: Workday Rising 2026 · Workday AI agents · Glean alternatives
Ready to automate your busywork?
Carly schedules, researches, and briefs you—so you can focus on what matters.
See what people say
"Before Carly, I relied on a Calendly link, but the whole process felt impersonal and not very professional. Carly changed that by handling all the back-and-forth, so I'm no longer stuck in endless email threads trying to line up schedules.
Now Carly reaches out to candidates, shares my real-time availability, lets them pick a slot, then sends a Zoom link and drops it straight into my calendar. She sends reminders to both of us before each call, which has significantly reduced no-shows and last-minute confusion.
On top of scheduling, Carly acts like a full executive assistant, sending me my schedule the night before so I can prepare for each call. It reminds me of the old x.ai assistant, but Carly is noticeably smarter, faster, and better suited to my healthcare recruitment business."
