BeforeQuery vs ServiceNow
ServiceNow is the incumbent ITSM platform, sold on breadth and enterprise gravity. BeforeQuery is a modern agent platform, sold on time-to-value and grounded action. If you're already deep on ServiceNow the trade-offs favour incremental adoption; if you're evaluating fresh, the shape of the decision looks different.
At a glance
ServiceNow column compiled from servicenow.com/products/ai-agents, /solutions/itsm-itbm, and the Now Assist / Flow Designer docs (public information as of 2026-09-07).
When to pick BeforeQuery
You're evaluating fresh and don't have ServiceNow gravity. Our 45-day go-live and free tier mean you can see grounded actions on your own data before the second sales call. You want chat-native surfaces beyond ServiceNow's ecosystem — Slack, Teams, Discord, Zendesk, Intercom, MCP for Claude Desktop / Cursor. ServiceNow bolts these on; we ship them native. You want transparent pricing. Free/Pro/Business/Enterprise tiers with published quotas mean no per-module surprise, no AI-credit meter tuning after the fact. You want to inspect the reasoning: paragraph-level source shown on every answer, entity path on every action, immutable audit log. Modern audit story built for agentic writes.
When to pick ServiceNow
You need FedRAMP High or IL5 today. ServiceNow is the enterprise-and-government gold standard for compliance depth; we're on the path (SOC 2 in Phase 2, HIPAA in Phase 4, FedRAMP only if a federal deal lands). You already run ServiceNow and your CMDB, ITSM, HRSD, and workflows depend on it. Ripping it out is a multi-year project; incremental adoption of Now Assist and Flow Designer is the cheaper move. You need 20+ module breadth on one platform — CSM, HRSD, IRM, ITAM, ITOM, CMDB, FSM, App Engine, Creator Workflows, etc. We cover 9 modules with sharper depth per module; ServiceNow covers everything with more surface area. Your buyer wants a name they've heard for 20 years — enterprise procurement gravity is real, and we're a younger platform.
When it is close
Both platforms handle password resets, JIT access, ticket deflection, approval-gated writes, and audit logging. If your evaluation reduces to those, the deciding factor is usually time-to-value (45 days vs. 12 months), pricing transparency, and whether you want the Assistant to live in surfaces beyond ServiceNow's own ecosystem.
Frequently asked questions
Can BeforeQuery coexist with ServiceNow?
Yes. ServiceNow can stay as your CMDB and system of record for tickets; BeforeQuery runs the daily-driver Assistant on top, reading tickets in and writing resolutions back. Native ServiceNow integration is on the Phase-4 roadmap; in the interim our Zendesk / Jira SM / Freshservice integrations cover most patterns.
How does grounding differ from Now Assist?
Now Assist answers from your knowledge articles and CMDB context. We show the exact source paragraph alongside every answer (one click to open) and abstain cleanly when the corpus doesn't have it. The UX invites verification; Now Assist expects trust.
Do you match ServiceNow's compliance posture?
Not today. ServiceNow is FedRAMP High / IL5 authorised; we're SOC 2 T2 (Phase 2), ISO 27001 (Phase 3), HIPAA + BAA (Phase 4), ISO 42001 (Phase 5). FedRAMP is only on the roadmap if we win a federal customer. If FedRAMP High is a hard requirement today, ServiceNow wins that decision.
What about the CMDB — can BeforeQuery replace it?
Not exactly. Our Context Graph covers users × identities × devices × licences × groups × apps × policies × tickets × documents — enough to run every ITSM/HR/Security playbook we ship. For deep CMDB use cases (dependency mapping, config item lifecycle, discovery), coexistence is the right pattern: keep ServiceNow CMDB as the source of truth, feed it into Context Graph on ingest.
How does the pricing actually compare?
Our published tiers ($0 / $99 / $499 / custom) are transparent per-workspace. ServiceNow is per-fulfiller + per-requester + per-module + AI credits, with enterprise contracts typically starting at $100K+/year. Mid-market teams often see 5-10× TCO reduction moving off ServiceNow to BeforeQuery for the daily-driver Assistant.
See it on your own data
Free plan, no credit card. Connect a source, install a playbook, and compare against your existing ServiceNow flow.