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Head to head · Assistant proactive · October 2026 research run

AstrBot vs nanobot

nanobot scores 62.4 (B) on agent readiness against AstrBot's 58.8 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. AstrBot leads on reliability. Both do assistant proactive.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 190 assistants comparisons

AstrBotAstrBotDevs · Agent harness C58.8/100#584 of 986 nanobotHKUDS · Agent harness B62.4/100#446 of 986

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 70

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

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

nanobot B

Best for A technical owner who wants an assistant on their own machine across many chat apps, with file-based memory and a free choice of model.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 77 against 62
  • Agent ergonomics, 74 against 54
  • Security & auth, 63 against 44
  • Transparency & trust, 48 against 40

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it

Watch for

No per-action approval was found in the docs or source. The agent sends messages, runs shell commands and edits files without asking

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAstrBotnanobotEdge
Reliability16%208170AstrBot +11
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26277nanobot +15
Agent ergonomics13%16.25474nanobot +20
Security & auth14%17.54463nanobot +19
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88182nanobot +1
Transparency & trust7%8.84048nanobot +8
Negative events≤15-2-6
TotalC 58.8/100B 62.4/100

Facts side by side

FactAstrBotnanobot
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorAstrBotDevsHKUDS
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceAGPL-3.0-or-laterMIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-09-272026-09-15
Terms last updated2026-01-12no document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno 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 stars49k stars

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.

nanobot

nanobot runs on the owner's machine under the MIT licence, with no telemetry found in its source and memory kept as files the owner can read and restore. No per-action approval step was found, and the shell sandbox and workspace restriction are off by default. Five security advisories were published between March and September 2026, all with fixes.

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

nanobot

  1. Set tools.restrictToWorkspace to true and tools.exec.sandbox to bwrap or seatbelt before giving it real accounts. Both are off by default
  2. Run 0.3.0 or later. Earlier versions carry the published SSRF flaw in web fetch (GHSA-vc5v-6vwm-wf9m)
  3. Keep allowFrom narrow on every channel and never set ["*"] on Email, which has no pairing
  4. Write secrets as ${VAR} references in ~/.nanobot/config.json. Plain values are stored in clear text
  5. Use nanobot -m "..." for a one-shot run, and keep nanobot gateway running for channels, schedules and heartbeat

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, AstrBot or nanobot?

nanobot scores 62.4 (B) on agent readiness against AstrBot's 58.8 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. AstrBot leads on reliability.

Are AstrBot and nanobot open source?

Yes. AstrBot is open source (AGPL-3.0-or-later). nanobot is open source (MIT).

Other comparisons with AstrBot or nanobot

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