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

AstrBot vs szn

AstrBot scores 58.8 (C) on agent readiness against szn's 7.3 (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 sznNomadic Futures · Platform F7.3/100#1010 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 5
  • Schema & documentation, 62 against 10
  • Agent ergonomics, 54 against 0
  • Security & auth, 44 against 0
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 20
  • Maintenance & community, 81 against 2
  • Transparency & trust, 40 against 23

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

szn F

Best for A person who wants calls, emails and bookings done for them and has an access code.

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

Watch for

Early access by access code only.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAstrBotsznEdge
Reliability16%20815AstrBot +76
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26210AstrBot +52
Agent ergonomics13%16.2540AstrBot +54
Security & auth14%17.5440AstrBot +44
Payments & pricing10%12.56020AstrBot +40
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8812AstrBot +79
Transparency & trust7%8.84023AstrBot +17
Negative events≤15-20
TotalC 58.8/100F 7.3/100

Facts side by side

FactAstrBotszn
KindAgent harnessPlatform
VendorAstrBotDevsNomadic Futures
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceAGPL-3.0-or-laterClosed service. No terms of service were found on theszn.ai. A privacy policy and an acceptable use policy (both last updated March 2026) apply.
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-09-27none
Terms last updated2026-01-12no document linked
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.

szn

szn is an errand assistant in early access that makes calls, sends emails and books for its owner, free during the preview for people with an access code. No outside agent can call it, no terms of service or legal entity appear in its policies, and its privacy policy says nothing on training.

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

szn

  1. Don't plan to call szn from another agent. It answers only its web app, iMessage, SMS and email for the owner.
  2. Tell the owner they need an access code to start, and that the acceptable use policy makes them responsible for confirming actions.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, AstrBot or szn?

AstrBot scores 58.8 (C) on agent readiness against szn's 7.3 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Are AstrBot and szn open source?

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

Other comparisons with AstrBot or szn

Disclosure

szn 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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