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

AstrBot vs Tab

AstrBot scores 58.8 (C) on agent readiness against Tab's 10.7 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Tab leads on transparency & trust. 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 TabTerrasoft, Inc. · Platform F10.7/100#1003 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 0
  • Agent ergonomics, 54 against 0
  • Security & auth, 44 against 4
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 0
  • Maintenance & community, 81 against 58

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

Tab F

Best for A person who wants a texting assistant that browses, calls and buys with tight checkout controls.

Ahead on

  • Transparency & trust, 45 against 40

Watch for

Private beta behind a waitlist.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAstrBotTabEdge
Reliability16%20815AstrBot +76
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.2620AstrBot +62
Agent ergonomics13%16.2540AstrBot +54
Security & auth14%17.5444AstrBot +40
Payments & pricing10%12.5600AstrBot +60
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88158AstrBot +23
Transparency & trust7%8.84045Tab +5
Negative events≤15-20
TotalC 58.8/100F 10.7/100

Facts side by side

FactAstrBotTab
KindAgent harnessPlatform
VendorAstrBotDevsTerrasoft, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreePaid
x402nono
LicenceAGPL-3.0-or-laterClosed service under Tab's Terms of Use (Terrasoft, Inc., effective 2 September 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.

Tab

Tab is a private-beta texting assistant with a detailed security page on credential isolation and checkout binding, and a public updates page. No outside agent can call it, no price is published, and its privacy policy says nothing on training with user content.

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

Tab

  1. Don't plan to call Tab from another agent. It answers only the owner's Messages or WhatsApp thread.
  2. Tell the owner that access needs a waitlist place and no price is published.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, AstrBot or Tab?

AstrBot scores 58.8 (C) on agent readiness against Tab's 10.7 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Tab leads on transparency & trust.

Are AstrBot and Tab open source?

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

Other comparisons with AstrBot or Tab

Disclosure

Tab 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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