Comparison
Kerna vs Gemini in Gmail
Kerna sorts the inbox into categories your team writes, pulls named fields out of the attachment, and drafts the reply for you to check. Gemini in Gmail summarises, drafts, searches your mail and Drive, and works across the rest of Workspace. The question is which of those the day actually costs you.
What Kerna brings to the day
- Your categories, and the inbox sorted into them.
- Named fields out of a PDF, not a sentence about the document.
- Sold for Outlook as well as Gmail, with the same categories on each.
Every Gemini figure below was read on Google’s own pages — the Workspace plan comparison and the generative-AI security page — and carries the date it was checked. Last reviewed .
Who each is for
Two different jobs
Kerna is for work that arrives by email and has to be acted on
Quotes, spec changes, invoices, complaints, shipping documents — mail from outside the company that carries a task and often a number. The value is in sorting it into categories you define and getting named fields out of the attachment, which is a different job from summarising a thread.
Gemini is for a Google company that wants one assistant everywhere
It is native, governed from the Workspace admin console, and the same assistant works across Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive, Meet and Chat. Nothing to install and nothing extra to pay. In the inbox it summarises, suggests responses, drafts, searches your mail and Drive, pulls up calendar events and to-dos, and runs custom Gems.
Overlap
What both of them genuinely do
Worth being clear about, because the differences below only mean something once the overlap is named.
- Summarising a thread you have not read.
- Drafting a reply inside the message you are looking at.
- Working across a wide range of languages.
- A published position that your content is not used to train models for other customers.
- Optional EU processing and support access.
Differences
Where they actually diverge
Whether it works in Outlook
Kerna
Yes. There is an Outlook add-in as well as a Gmail add-on, with the same categories and the same extraction presets on each. A subscription covers one mailbox on one platform.
Gemini in Gmail
Gmail only. Gemini is a Workspace feature, so there is no Outlook version to buy — a team on Microsoft gets nothing from it at any price.
Sorting the inbox
Kerna
Triage into categories the customer defines — Quote requested, Spec change, Chasing payment — rather than a fixed set, run when you ask for it.
Gemini in Gmail
Summarising, searching and answering questions about the inbox, including how to set up a label or a filter yourself. What the documentation does not describe is the assistant sorting your mail into a category set you wrote.
What comes out of an attachment
Kerna
Structured extraction across PDF, DOC and XLS with 100 field presets — 20 industries by 5 document types — exporting to Sheets or Docs in Gmail, Excel, Word or CSV in Outlook.
Gemini in Gmail
Gemini can work with a file, and Google’s Gmail page publishes nothing about structured extraction from an attachment. So this is unknown rather than absent — what is not described anywhere is getting named fields out of the document.
What reaches the model
Kerna
Personal data is redacted from the message inside Kerna’s own processing, on every request, before any content is transmitted to the inference provider.
Gemini in Gmail
Google states business data in Gmail is not reviewed by humans or used for generative AI training outside your domain without permission, cites ISO 42001, BSI C5 and FedRAMP High, and ships prompt-injection defences and DLP controls. Nothing is described as removed before content reaches the model.
What it costs, and who pays
Kerna
€69 a month for up to five seats on Business, sharing one token pool, on top of whatever mail platform you already run. A free tier at €0 means the first run costs nothing.
Gemini in Gmail
No separate charge — it is in the Workspace subscription, on every paid tier. But everyone on the plan is charged for it whether they use it or not, and there is no free Workspace tier, only a 14-day trial.
Cost
What each one actually costs
Gemini has no price of its own, so the comparison is not like for like: one is an add-on you buy, the other is a feature of a subscription you already hold. Read from each vendor’s own pricing page, with the date.
Kerna
- Entry price
- Standard: EUR 12 per month. Pro: EUR 22 per month. Free Starter available.
- Read on the vendor’s own page · checked 2026-08-22
- Five seats
- Business: EUR 69 per month for up to five users sharing 7,500,000 tokens.
- Read on the vendor’s own page · checked 2026-08-22
- Free tier
- Yes. Starter includes all functions within its token allowance.
- Read on the vendor’s own page · checked 2026-08-22
Gemini in Gmail
- Entry price
- Gemini in Gmail is included in Workspace Business Starter, Standard and Plus. Workspace pricing varies by region and billing term.
- Read on the vendor’s own page · checked 2026-09-06
- Five seats
- No separate AI surcharge for five users already on an eligible Workspace plan. New customers must include the underlying Workspace subscription.
- Read on the vendor’s own page · checked 2026-09-06
- Free tier
- Workspace offers a 14-day business trial. Personal Gmail and Google AI offers have separate eligibility and limits.
- Read on the vendor’s own page · checked 2026-09-06
Gemini is included in the Workspace subscription; Kerna is a separate line item, free at Starter and EUR 69 a month for five seats on Business. The question is not which is cheaper — it is whether the work the line item does is work you are doing by hand today.
Data handling
Where content goes on each side
Both can keep processing in the EU, so jurisdiction is not what separates them. What does is whether personal data is removed before the model sees the message.
Kerna
- Processing
- The application runs on Google Cloud Run in Belgium, with Firestore in Poland. Kerna masks detected personal data before model processing and has a zero data retention agreement with OpenAI Ireland Limited. Account and usage data have separate retention rules. The model-processing location must be established from the applicable configuration and terms, not the contracting entity’s address.
- Read on the vendor’s own page · checked 2026-08-22
Gemini in Gmail
- Processing
- Google states that Workspace data is not reviewed by humans or used to train generative models outside the customer’s domain without permission. Regional and administrative controls depend on the service and plan. This does not by itself establish masking before model processing.
- Read on the vendor’s own page · checked 2026-09-05
Kerna’s full position, clause by clause, is on the trust page.
When Kerna is the better fit
- Anyone on your team uses Outlook. Gemini in Gmail does nothing for them.
- The categories that matter are yours, and you want the inbox sorted into them rather than summarised.
- The number you need is inside a PDF, and you want it as a named field rather than a sentence about the document.
- Redaction before the model call is a question your security review asks, and “not used for training outside your domain” is not the answer it wants.
- You want to try it on one morning’s inbox without moving anyone’s plan or spending anything.
Where Gemini already fits
- You are on Google Workspace, nobody uses Outlook, and summaries plus drafting is the whole of what you need. You already own that, and there is nothing to buy.
- You want one assistant across Docs, Sheets, Slides, Meet and Chat rather than one that works on the mail. Kerna’s scope is the inbox: sorting what arrived, getting data out of it, and drafting what goes back.
Try it on one morning’s inbox
The free tier costs nothing and installs in minutes. A single morning of real mail settles this faster than any comparison table.
Deployment
Getting it in front of a team
Time to value
One person installs Kerna from the Google Workspace Marketplace or AppSource in a couple of minutes. An administrator can also deploy it across the organisation from the admin console, which is a larger piece of work. There is a free tier at €0, so putting it in front of somebody costs nothing.
What it needs
For Outlook: a Microsoft-hosted mailbox. Mailboxes on POP, IMAP or on-premises Exchange are not supported. Gmail has no such restriction.
The gap worth knowing first
What Kerna does not have: configurable company single sign-on (you sign in with your Microsoft or Google account, but there is no SAML or OIDC connection to your own identity provider), SCIM, SOC 2, ISO 27001, and Outlook mobile — though the Gmail add-on does work in the Gmail mobile app. Google holds ISO 42001, BSI C5 and FedRAMP High. Stated here rather than left to be discovered, because a requirement is easier to check now than after an install.
Other comparisons
Comparing something else
Same method on each: figures read from the vendor’s own pages, dated, and the parts where they win stated plainly.
Still working out what to compare on? Seven questions to ask any vendor.
See what is left after the summaries
Kerna’s Starter tier is €0, includes every feature, and carries a trial token allowance to run them on. Open one morning’s inbox: if what remains after the summaries is still sorting the work into your own categories and typing numbers off a PDF, that is the part Kerna does.
Google, Gmail, Google Workspace and Gemini are trademarks of Google LLC; Outlook and Microsoft 365 are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. Kerna is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them. Comparative statements reflect each vendor’s own published documentation on the date shown.