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Head to head · Assistants reached by message · October 2026 research run

AstrBot vs Boba

AstrBot scores 58.8 (C) on agent readiness against Boba's 10.3 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do assistants reached by message.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 834 assistants comparisons

AstrBotAstrBotDevs · Agent harness C58.8/100#585 of 1010 Bobahumans& ai, inc. · Platform F10.3/100#1004 of 1010

Which one, for what

AstrBot C

Best for Someone who wants one self-run bot answering on QQ, Telegram, Slack, Discord, Lark or WeCom, in private or group chats, with scheduled tasks, a knowledge base and plugins.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 81 against 15
  • Schema & documentation, 62 against 0
  • Agent ergonomics, 54 against 0
  • Security & auth, 44 against 0
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
  • Maintenance & community, 81 against 2

Also in its favour

  • Open source

Watch for

No approval step before any tool call. The agent sends messages, creates scheduled tasks and calls MCP tools without asking

Boba F

Best for Groups who want a free assistant inside a shared chat for planning, drafting and images.

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

No API, MCP server or A2A endpoint for an outside agent.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAstrBotBobaEdge
Reliability16%208115AstrBot +66
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.2620AstrBot +62
Agent ergonomics13%16.2540AstrBot +54
Security & auth14%17.5440AstrBot +44
Payments & pricing10%12.56030AstrBot +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8812AstrBot +79
Transparency & trust7%8.84039AstrBot +1
Negative events≤15-20
TotalC 58.8/100F 10.3/100

Facts side by side

FactAstrBotBoba
KindAgent harnessPlatform
VendorAstrBotDevshumans& ai, inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceAGPL-3.0-or-laterClosed service under Boba's Terms of Service (humans& ai, inc., last updated 5 October 2026).
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-09-27none
Terms last updated2026-01-12
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the text
Popularity42k starsnone

Verdicts

AstrBot

Fourteen official messaging adapters, scheduled tasks and scoped API keys come in one AGPL-3.0 program with releases most weeks. No tool call asks for approval, no mail, calendar or long-term memory connector is built in, and usage statistics, including the machine's hostname, are sent by default.

Boba

Boba is a free texting assistant for one-to-one and group chats over iMessage, RCS and SMS, started by sending one message with no card or app. No outside agent can call it, its privacy notice uses inputs and outputs to train its models with no opt-out found, and no status page or security contact was found.

Before you call either

AstrBot

  1. Set ASTRBOT_DISABLE_METRICS=1 before the first start. Statistics, including the hostname, are sent to tickstats.soulter.top by default
  2. Set dashboard.host to 127.0.0.1 in data/cmd_config.json, or the DASHBOARD_HOST variable, unless remote access is intended. The default is 0.0.0.0
  3. Create an abk_ key in Settings, OpenAPI with only the scopes needed, and send it as Authorization: Bearer or X-API-Key
  4. Include username in every POST /api/v1/chat body. Without the chat:admin scope an administrator ID is rejected
  5. Check Extensions, Future Tasks after asking for a schedule. One-off tasks are deleted after their run even when the run fails

Boba

  1. Don't plan to call Boba from another agent. It answers only text messages in the Messages app.
  2. Tell people in a group chat that messages sent to Boba may be used to train its models.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, AstrBot or Boba?

AstrBot scores 58.8 (C) on agent readiness against Boba's 10.3 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Are AstrBot and Boba open source?

AstrBot is open source (AGPL-3.0-or-later). No open-source release is listed for Boba.

Other comparisons with AstrBot or Boba

Disclosure

Boba competes with LocalGhost, which Anchor Terminal's founder builds. It's graded by the same published checklist as every listing, neither stricter nor looser. Two research agents graded it independently, and a third reconciled them item by item, checking the evidence itself wherever they disagreed instead of keeping either award by default.

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