Ketrone sells a deployment, not a download. That single choice explains almost every other difference between these two products, including the ones that will matter to you six months in.
Ketrone is an Abu Dhabi Global Market company selling what it calls a proprietary legal AI platform run by an autonomous agent, configured into your firm over two to eight weeks rather than handed to you to set up. That is a real and defensible model, and its UAE work, onshore alongside DIFC and ADGM, reads like it was written by people who practise there. It also publishes its per-seat prices, which most of this category refuses to do. HAQQ runs the other way: you sign up and start, coverage spans 200+ countries, and matters, a knowledge base and billing sit in the same platform as the AI. If you want a vendor to build it around you and your work is GCC-centred, look hard at Ketrone. If you want to be working this afternoon, or your files cross more borders than the Gulf, the two stop being comparable.
A deployment, not a subscription
Ketrone says it plainly: it is not a tool you are left to configure alone. Most firms are live in two to eight weeks across a Design, Deploy and Growth sequence. That is a genuine service, and a genuine wait.
Read the privacy policy next to the pitch
Sovereign hosting is part of how Ketrone sells. Its own privacy policy discloses that data may be processed in the US and EU on AWS or Azure under SCCs. Both are probably true, ask which one applies to your contract.
Claimed on the homepage, absent from the product pages
Ketrone's own description lists matter management and billing. Its product pages document an assistant, Vault storage and intake, and neither of those two. Ask for a demo of both before you sign.
Most legal AI vendors sell you a login. Ketrone sells you an implementation. Its homepage draws the line itself, the platform is not something you are left to configure alone, and the product page puts a clock on it: most firms are fully up and running in two to eight weeks, across a Design stage that maps the firm's practice areas, jurisdictions and languages, a Deploy stage, and an ongoing Growth stage. For a firm without an IT function or an innovation lead, that is not marketing. It is the difference between software that gets used and software that gets expensed.
The cost is the obvious one. Two to eight weeks is two to eight weeks, and a platform shaped around how your firm works today is, by construction, shaped around how your firm works today. HAQQ takes the opposite bet: a lawyer signs up and is drafting the same day, and the platform is opinionated rather than bespoke. Neither is the smarter choice in the abstract. If you have a distinctive workflow and the patience to have it modelled, Ketrone's approach is better. If you want to find out this week whether legal AI helps you at all, ours is.
Ketrone's security posture is one of the more interesting things about it, and it rewards reading both documents rather than one. Its terms of service carry a warranty most vendors will not write down: that it does not use customer content to train, fine-tune or otherwise improve its models, stated as a default service standard with no opt-out to configure. Its privacy policy names two further controls, a Volatile Session mode where content is processed entirely in RAM and never written to persistent disk, and an Immediate Purge tool. If a client of yours asks hard questions about AI and confidentiality, those are good answers to be able to give.
The same privacy policy is also where the sovereignty story gets more specific than the sales story. It discloses that personal data may be transferred to and processed outside the ADGM, specifically in the United States and the European Union, on cloud infrastructure such as AWS or Azure, governed by Standard Contractual Clauses. That is a perfectly normal architecture and we are not suggesting otherwise. But if you are buying Ketrone because you were told the data stays on your servers, get which configuration you are on written into the contract, because their own published documents describe both.
Ketrone documents its product in unusual detail for a young company, and that detail is where its edges show. Across the product page, the pricing page and four dedicated product pages, what is described is an assistant and the things immediately around it: research with citations, contract review graded by severity, extraction into sortable tables, a Word and Google Docs surface, client intake through a portal, and Vault storage. Every plan, its pricing page says, includes the AI legal assistant and secure Vault storage.
Ketrone's own homepage description is broader than its product pages, though: it says the platform covers client intake, matter management, drafting and billing. Matter management and billing are precisely the two items on that list we could not find documented anywhere in the visible product copy, no matter file, no time entry, no trust ledger, no invoice to a client, and the word billing elsewhere on the site refers to Ketrone's own subscription cycle. We grade both as partial rather than absent, because a vendor's own description of its product is evidence and we are not going to call it nothing.
The practical advice is the same either way: ask to see them. If Ketrone demonstrates a matter file with time running against it and an invoice coming out of the other end, that is a materially different product from the one its pages document, and you should buy on the demo rather than on either our reading or its metadata. Where HAQQ differs is that this is not a question you have to ask, matters, documents, a persistent knowledge base, time capture and invoicing are in the same subscription as the AI, with the AI working inside them rather than beside them.
You want the vendor to do the implementation. Ketrone's whole proposition is that it maps and configures the platform around your firm rather than handing you a blank workspace, and for a practice with no IT function that is worth real money.
Your work is concentrated in the UAE and the Gulf. Ketrone is an ADGM-registered company writing for firms that move between onshore civil law and the DIFC and ADGM common-law courts, and its material on that reads like practitioners wrote it.
You want the no-training commitment written into the contract rather than set in a preferences panel. Ketrone's terms of service state it as a warranty with no opt-out to configure, alongside a RAM-only session mode and an immediate purge tool, worth reading in full and holding them to.
You want to see a price before you talk to anyone. Ketrone publishes per-seat tiers from $30 per user/month, which a large part of this category still refuses to do.
Choose HAQQ
You want to start now. HAQQ is self-serve from signup; there is no design-and-deploy window between deciding and working.
Your matters cross more borders than the Gulf. HAQQ covers 200+ countries, so the answer does not change when a file moves jurisdiction.
You need the practice platform without having to verify it exists. Matters, documents, knowledge, time and invoicing are documented and in the same product, so drafting output lands in a file rather than a chat window.
You would rather not be a deployment. If your firm's workflow is ordinary and you want the software to be opinionated about it, an implementation project is overhead you are paying for twice.
Switching from Ketrone
The move is mostly a document move. Ketrone's published architecture keeps firm content in Vault, so the practical work is exporting those documents and any extraction tables you have built, then rebuilding them as a HAQQ knowledge base. Ketrone's terms of service commit it to not using customer content to train or fine-tune its models. On exit that warranty is the thing to hold them to: ask for written confirmation that it covered your data for the whole term, rather than inferring it.
Two things to settle before you give notice. Check your billing cycle: Ketrone's terms state that subscriptions are non-refundable and that access continues to the end of the current cycle with no pro-rated refund, so time the cancellation rather than the decision. And if any part of your firm was running on a customised deployment, ask for that configuration documented in writing, the value of a bespoke implementation is the configuration, and it does not export by itself.
Export documents and any Smart Tables extraction sets from Vault while the subscription is live.
Confirm the renewal date and cancel to land at the end of a paid cycle, not mid-month.
Request written documentation of any firm-specific configuration built during the Design stage.
Rebuild the knowledge base in HAQQ and bring matters, time and invoicing into the same platform.
The verdict
Ketrone is a credible GCC-focused legal AI whose real product is the implementation; HAQQ is the self-serve platform for firms that want the practice system and the AI in one place, across 200+ countries.
This is a genuine choice rather than a mismatch. Ketrone has done the harder thing for a young company, published its prices, written its no-training commitment into the contract, and documented its product in enough detail that its boundaries are visible. Firms that want a vendor to come in and build around them, in a market it clearly knows, should take it seriously.
The case for HAQQ is not that Ketrone is weak. It is that a deployment is a commitment made before you know whether the tool works for you, and that an assistant without a practice platform underneath it leaves you assembling the rest. If those two trade-offs do not bother you, Ketrone is a reasonable buy.
Best for: Firms that want to start today and need the practice platform and the AI in one subscription
Written by HAQQ. We make one of the two products compared here: read it as a vendor's argument, and check the linked sources. Ketrone · HAQQ
Questions Fréquentes
What is Ketrone?
Ketrone is a legal AI platform from KETRONE LTD, a company registered in the Abu Dhabi Global Market. It describes itself as a proprietary platform powered by a fully autonomous AI agent, and its distinguishing feature is the delivery model: rather than selling access and leaving a firm to configure it, Ketrone deploys and customises the platform inside the firm. The product covers legal research with citations, contract review graded by severity, multi-document extraction into sortable tables, a Word and Google Docs surface, client intake through a portal, and Vault document storage. It publishes an Arabic interface alongside English.
How much does Ketrone cost?
Ketrone publishes per-seat pricing for individuals, which is unusual in this category. Its pricing page lists four tiers, Core, Pro, Max and Litigator, with Core at $30 per user/month, and states that every plan includes the AI legal assistant and secure Vault storage. Teams and Enterprise are handled separately: the same page says they build on these with collaboration, volume pricing and custom deployment, and routes to a sales contact rather than a figure. Subscriptions are billed in UAE Dirhams and are non-refundable under its terms. We have not published Teams or Enterprise numbers here because Ketrone does not.
Does Ketrone train its AI on your documents?
Ketrone says no, and commits to it in the contract rather than a settings panel. Its terms of service warrant that it does not use Content to train, fine-tune, or otherwise improve its underlying AI models, and state that this is a default with no opt-out required. Its privacy policy adds two further controls by name: a Volatile Session mode in which content is processed entirely in RAM and never written to persistent disk, and an Immediate Purge tool. That is a stronger written position than much of the market offers, and worth reading in full alongside the data-transfer section of the same document.
Is Ketrone better than HAQQ for UAE law?
For work concentrated in the UAE it is a serious contender, and we would not pretend otherwise. Ketrone is registered in the ADGM and writes with real command of the split between onshore federal law and the DIFC and ADGM common-law courts. The question is what happens at the edges of that: HAQQ covers 200+ countries, so a file that moves to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UK or the US does not need a second system. If your practice genuinely never leaves the Gulf, that breadth is not worth much to you.
How long does Ketrone take to set up?
Ketrone's product page states that most firms are fully up and running in two to eight weeks, across Design, Deploy and Growth stages. That is the vendor's own figure. It is a feature if you want the platform shaped around your firm, and a cost if you are trying to test whether legal AI helps you at all, HAQQ is self-serve from signup, so the comparison is weeks against the same afternoon.
Does Ketrone handle matters, time tracking and invoicing?
Ketrone says it does: its homepage description lists client intake, matter management, drafting and billing. Its visible product copy is narrower. The product and pricing pages and the four dedicated product pages describe an AI assistant, Vault storage, client intake and document workflow tooling, and we could not find a matter file, a time entry, a trust ledger or a client invoice documented on any of them, the word billing elsewhere on the site refers to Ketrone's own subscription cycle. So we grade these partial rather than absent, and suggest asking for a demo of both specifically. HAQQ includes matters, time capture and invoicing in the same subscription as the AI.
Does Ketrone support Arabic?
Yes. Ketrone publishes an Arabic interface at ketrone.io/ar, and its homepage lists Arabic among the languages it supports alongside a set of jurisdictions including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Germany, France, Korea and the US. HAQQ is also Arabic-first, so this is not a point of difference between the two, it is a point of difference between both of them and most of the Western legal AI market.
