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Head to head · Assistants that remember you · October 2026 research run

Atticus vs IronClaw

IronClaw scores 66.7 (B) on agent readiness against Atticus's 42.9 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do assistants that remember you.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 875 assistants comparisons

AtticusSaarthurR (Saarth Ranka) · Platform E42.9/100#974 of 1094 IronClawNEAR AI · Agent harness B66.7/100#299 of 1094

Which one, for what

Atticus E

Best for A person on macOS 26 with a Claude Pro or Max plan who wants voice control of apps, windows, files and the browser.

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

No API, MCP server or documented command an outside agent can call

IronClaw B

Best for One technical owner who wants a self-hosted assistant over Gmail, Calendar, Slack and Telegram with credentials kept out of the model's reach.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 74 against 15
  • Agent ergonomics, 69 against 9
  • Security & auth, 66 against 49
  • Maintenance & community, 74 against 51
  • Transparency & trust, 75 against 56

Watch for

Global auto-approve defaults to on in the 1.4.1 source, so tools marked ask (send, trash, delete) run without a prompt. Only financial, approval and budget effects always ask

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAtticusIronClawEdge
Reliability16%206867Atticus +1
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.21574IronClaw +59
Agent ergonomics13%16.2969IronClaw +60
Security & auth14%17.54966IronClaw +17
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.85174IronClaw +23
Transparency & trust7%8.85675IronClaw +19
Negative events≤150-2
TotalE 42.9/100B 66.7/100

Facts side by side

FactAtticusIronClaw
KindPlatformAgent harness
VendorSaarthurR (Saarth Ranka)NEAR AI
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthNoneOAuth or key
PricingYour planFreemium
x402nono
LicenceMITMIT OR Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-10-142026-09-29
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno date given
Customer content may train models
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver
Popularity163 stars13k stars

Verdicts

Atticus

Atticus runs a person's Mac by voice on their existing Claude or Devin plan, with a sandboxed safe mode and a local log of every command. It has no API, MCP server or documented command for another agent, it is five days old, and it rebuilds itself from the main branch every six hours by default.

IronClaw

Credentials stay in an encrypted store and are injected at the host boundary, and extensions declare per-tool permissions, network targets and OAuth scopes. The global auto-approve setting defaults to on in the 1.4.1 source, so tools marked ask, such as gmail.send_message, run unprompted until the owner turns it off.

Before you call either

Atticus

  1. Don't plan to call Atticus from another agent. It takes requests only from its own shortcut and typing box
  2. If a user runs Atticus beside you, expect it to move windows and type into apps on the same Mac
  3. Point a user who wants pinned versions to Settings > About & Updates to turn off self-update

IronClaw

  1. Open Settings and turn off global auto-approve, or set send and delete tools to ask each time, before connecting mail or chat accounts
  2. Install with the release installer and run ironclaw onboard. 1.x does not migrate 0.29 data, so use a fresh home directory
  3. Call POST /api/v1/responses with the bearer token from ~/.ironclaw/reborn/webui-token. Keep under 30 requests in 60 seconds
  4. Resolve approval and OAuth gates in the web interface. The Responses API fails the turn instead of surfacing them
  5. Connect MCP servers over HTTP only. The stdio transport is rejected

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Atticus or IronClaw?

IronClaw scores 66.7 (B) on agent readiness against Atticus's 42.9 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories.

Are Atticus and IronClaw open source?

Yes. Atticus is open source (MIT). IronClaw is open source (MIT OR Apache-2.0).

Other comparisons with Atticus or IronClaw

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