Get an audit

Head to head · Assistant proactive · October 2026 research run

AstrBot vs Poke

AstrBot scores 58.8 (C) on agent readiness against Poke's 37.6 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Poke leads on transparency & trust. 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 PokeThe Interaction Company of California Inc. · Platform F37.6/100#955 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 51
  • Schema & documentation, 62 against 42
  • Agent ergonomics, 54 against 30
  • Security & auth, 44 against 24
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
  • Maintenance & community, 81 against 31

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card
  • Open source

Watch for

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

Poke F

Best for One person who wants an assistant in their text messages that reads and drafts mail, manages a calendar and reaches other apps through MCP.

Ahead on

  • Transparency & trust, 58 against 40

Watch for

No documented setting for which actions need approval before Poke sends, deletes or spends. Release notes mention email draft approval only in passing

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAstrBotPokeEdge
Reliability16%208151AstrBot +30
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26242AstrBot +20
Agent ergonomics13%16.25430AstrBot +24
Security & auth14%17.54424AstrBot +20
Payments & pricing10%12.56030AstrBot +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88131AstrBot +50
Transparency & trust7%8.84058Poke +18
Negative events≤15-20
TotalC 58.8/100F 37.6/100

Facts side by side

FactAstrBotPoke
KindAgent harnessPlatform
VendorAstrBotDevsThe Interaction Company of California Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceAGPL-3.0-or-laterProprietary service under Poke's Terms of Service. The poke npm package (CLI and Node.js SDK) declares MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-09-272026-06-25
Terms last updated2026-01-122026-03-17
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2026-09-11
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textyes
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textyes
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.

Poke

Hosted assistant that answers in Apple Messages, WhatsApp, Telegram and RCS and acts in Gmail, Outlook, calendars and MCP servers. Plan prices and a status page are public. No approval settings, credential storage, model providers or retention periods are documented, and customer content trains models unless Maximum Privacy is selected.

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

Poke

  1. POST JSON to https://poke.com/api/v1/inbound/api-message with a Bearer key from Kitchen. Legacy pk_ keys work only on the deprecated /api/v1/inbound-sms/webhook
  2. Expect only {"success": true} back. Poke's answer goes to the owner's message thread, not to the caller
  3. Do not retry a POST blindly. No idempotency key is documented, and a repeated message may make Poke act twice
  4. Treat an API key as full access to the owner's mail, calendar and integrations. Create one key per automation and revoke it when done
  5. Avoid the prefilled integration link with apiKey in the query string for real secrets. Enter the key in the form or use npx poke@latest mcp add -k

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, AstrBot or Poke?

AstrBot scores 58.8 (C) on agent readiness against Poke's 37.6 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Poke leads on transparency & trust.

Are AstrBot and Poke open source?

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

Other comparisons with AstrBot or Poke

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.

Get an auditSee a sample report