Compare Agent Builder and AI Assistant

Requirements

These features require the appropriate Elastic Stack subscription or Serverless project feature tier.

Elastic Agent Builder is a powerful and flexible platform for building AI agents, tools, and workflows. Agent Builder comes with built-in agents and tools for common use cases, and lets you create custom agents and tools for your specific needs.

Agent Builder powers the AI Agent chat experience.

The Elastic Stack includes Elastic's core products such as Elasticsearch, Kibana, Logstash, and Beats. Availability Generally available since 9.4 This functionality is generally available and ready for production usage. Unless stated otherwise on the page, this functionality is available when your Elastic Stack is deployed on Elastic Cloud Hosted, Elastic Cloud Enterprise, Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes, and self-managed environments. This documentation corresponds to the latest patch available for each minor version. If you're not using the latest patch, check the release notes for changes. Elastic Cloud Serverless projects are autoscaled environments, fully managed by Elastic and available on Elastic Cloud. Availability Generally available This functionality is generally available and ready for production usage. Serverless interfaces and procedures might differ from classic Elastic Stack deployments. Agent Builder is the default chat experience for all solutions, replacing AI Assistant.
The Elastic Stack includes Elastic's core products such as Elasticsearch, Kibana, Logstash, and Beats. Availability Generally available in 9.3 This functionality is generally available and ready for production usage. Preview in 9.2 This functionality is in technical preview and is ready for evaluation. Use with caution in production; it is not recommended for mission-critical workloads. Elastic will work to fix any issues, but features in technical preview are not subject to the support SLA of official GA features. Specific Support terms apply. Unless stated otherwise on the page, this functionality is available when your Elastic Stack is deployed on Elastic Cloud Hosted, Elastic Cloud Enterprise, Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes, and self-managed environments. This documentation corresponds to the latest patch available for each minor version. If you're not using the latest patch, check the release notes for changes. Agent Builder is the default for Elasticsearch solution users. Elastic Observability and Elastic Security solution users can switch from AI Assistant to Agent Builder to opt in.

You can switch between the two experiences at any time.

While Agent Builder offers expanded functionality compared to AI Assistant, it does not yet support a number of AI Assistant features. If you rely on AI Assistant capabilities today, consider the differences between each experience before opting in.

Use this page to learn about:

How to switch between the AI Assistant and Agent Builder chat experiences
Feature differences between AI Assistant and Agent Builder

Switch between chat experiences

Important

Agent Builder cannot access your chats, prompts, or knowledge base entries from AI Assistant. However, this data remains accessible if you switch back to the AI Assistant chat experience.

Kibana will prompt you to switch to the Agent Builder chat experience if your deployment supports it and you have sufficient privileges. You can opt-in from this prompt immediately.

You can also switch chat experiences at any time:

Use the global search field to find GenAI Settings.
Toggle between the two experiences under Chat Experience.
Click the Save changes button.

Tip

For connectors and tested models, refer to Configure access to LLMs.

To learn more about the chat UI modes, refer to Chat UI modes in Elastic Agent Builder

Feature differences between Agent Builder and AI Assistant

Agent Builder doesn't yet support all AI Assistant features. The specific differences vary by solution:

Serverless Stack 9.4+

Elastic Security

Feature	Agent Builder	AI Assistant
Knowledge Base	❌	✅
Data anonymization	❌	✅
Time awareness	✅	✅
Chat sharing	❌	✅
Citations	Partial	✅
Audit logging	Partial	✅
Quick prompts	Partial	✅
In-chat previews of attached data	❌	✅
AI insights	✅	✅
Use-case specific skills	✅	❌
Modular skills	✅	❌
Custom skill creation	✅	❌
Custom agent creation	✅	❌
Custom tool selection	✅	❌
Integration with Elastic workflows	✅	❌

Agent Builder partially addresses AI Assistant's quick prompts through skills and slash commands that let you invoke a skill directly (for example, /threat-hunting).

Elastic Observability and Search

Feature	Agent Builder	AI Assistant
Knowledge Base	❌	✅
Data anonymization	❌	✅
Chat sharing	❌	✅
Chat duplication	❌	✅
Chat archiving	❌	✅
Alerting rule connector action	❌	✅
AI insights	✅	✅
Use-case specific skills	✅	❌
Modular skills	✅	❌
Custom agent creation	✅	❌
Custom tool selection	✅	❌

Stack Preview 9.3+

Elastic Security

Feature	Agent Builder	AI Assistant
Knowledge Base	❌	✅
Data anonymization	❌	✅
Time awareness	❌	✅
Chat sharing	❌	✅
Citations	❌	✅
Audit logging	❌	✅
Quick prompts	❌	✅
In-chat previews of attached data	❌	✅
AI insights	✅	✅
Use-case specific agents	✅	❌
Custom agent creation	✅	❌
Custom tool selection	✅	❌
Integration with Elastic workflows	✅	❌

Elastic Observability and Search

Feature	Agent Builder	AI Assistant
Knowledge Base	❌	✅
Data anonymization	❌	✅
Chat sharing	❌	✅
Chat duplication	❌	✅
Chat archiving	❌	✅
Alerting rule connector action	❌	✅
AI insights	✅	✅
Use-case specific agents	✅	❌
Custom agent creation	✅	❌
Custom tool selection	✅	❌

API differences between Agent Builder and AI Assistant

Each AI chat experience has different APIs. To learn which actions each option supports, refer to: