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Head to head · Assistant proactive · October 2026 research run

AstrBot vs OpenClaw

OpenClaw scores 67.1 (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 OpenClawOpenClaw Foundation · Agent harness B67.1/100#270 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 75

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

OpenClaw B

Best for A technical owner who wants an assistant on their own machine across many chat apps, with their choice of model and files they can read and delete.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 84 against 62
  • Agent ergonomics, 77 against 54
  • Security & auth, 74 against 44
  • Maintenance & community, 86 against 81
  • Transparency & trust, 68 against 40

Watch for

Without configuration the default is full access. Host exec runs with no approval and sandboxing is off

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAstrBotOpenClawEdge
Reliability16%208175AstrBot +6
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26284OpenClaw +22
Agent ergonomics13%16.25477OpenClaw +23
Security & auth14%17.54474OpenClaw +30
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88186OpenClaw +5
Transparency & trust7%8.84068OpenClaw +28
Negative events≤15-2-8
TotalC 58.8/100B 67.1/100

Facts side by side

FactAstrBotOpenClaw
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorAstrBotDevsOpenClaw Foundation
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceAGPL-3.0-or-laterMIT
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-09-272026-10-12
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 stars392k 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.

OpenClaw

Self-hosted under the MIT licence, with state, memory and credentials kept on the owner's machine and no paid tier. A fresh install runs tools on the host with full access, no approval prompt and no sandbox, and the project has published 722 security advisories since January 2026, 14 of them critical.

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

OpenClaw

  1. Set a session permission mode of guarded or workspace, or tools.exec.mode, before connecting mail. The default runs host commands without approval
  2. Turn on agents.defaults.sandbox for any agent that reads mail, web pages or attachments. Sandboxing is off by default
  3. Set tools.message.crossContext.allowAcrossProviders and allowWithinProvider to false to confine sends to the current conversation
  4. Route incoming mail to a restricted reader agent, as the IMAP and Gmail guides show, and deny gateway, cron, sessions_spawn and sessions_send for it
  5. Run openclaw security audit after setup, and treat the Gateway token as an owner credential. POST /tools/invoke accepts it with full operator access

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, AstrBot or OpenClaw?

OpenClaw scores 67.1 (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 OpenClaw open source?

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

Other comparisons with AstrBot or OpenClaw

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