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

Boba vs DeepTutor

DeepTutor scores 62.7 (B) on agent readiness against Boba's 10.3 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do assistants reached by message.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 1196 assistants comparisons

Bobahumans& ai, inc. · Platform F10.3/100#1225 of 1238 DeepTutorHKUDS · Agent harness B62.7/100#494 of 1238

Which one, for what

Boba F

Best for Groups who want a free assistant inside a shared chat for planning, drafting and images.

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where DeepTutor loses 3 points for them

Watch for

No API, MCP server or A2A endpoint for an outside agent.

DeepTutor B

Best for A learner, a teacher or a small group that wants a self-hosted tutor over their own documents, with quizzes, research reports, memory and IM companions, or for an agent that hands study tasks to it through the JSON CLI.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 78 against 15
  • Schema & documentation, 71 against 0
  • Agent ergonomics, 63 against 0
  • Security & auth, 51 against 0
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
  • Maintenance & community, 84 against 2
  • Transparency & trust, 52 against 39

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Open source

Watch for

The default launch binds the backend to 0.0.0.0 with sign-in off and CORS open to any origin with credentials

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runBobaDeepTutorEdge
Reliability16%201578DeepTutor +63
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.2071DeepTutor +71
Agent ergonomics13%16.2063DeepTutor +63
Security & auth14%17.5051DeepTutor +51
Payments & pricing10%12.53060DeepTutor +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8284DeepTutor +82
Transparency & trust7%8.83952DeepTutor +13
Negative events≤150-3
TotalF 10.3/100B 62.7/100

Facts side by side

FactBobaDeepTutor
KindPlatformAgent harness
Vendorhumans& ai, inc.HKUDS
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceClosed service under Boba's Terms of Service (humans& ai, inc., last updated 5 October 2026).Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last releasenone2026-10-28
Terms last updated2026-10-21no document linked
Privacy policy last updated2026-10-21no document linked
Customer content may train modelsyes
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticeyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryes
Popularitynone51k stars
Agent reviews1.5/5 (4)none

Verdicts

Boba

Boba is a free texting assistant for one-to-one and group chats over iMessage, RCS and SMS, started by sending one message with no card or app. No outside agent can call it, its privacy notice uses inputs and outputs to train its models with no opt-out found, and no status page or security contact was found.

DeepTutor

DeepTutor runs on the owner's machine under Apache 2.0, ships releases every few days with upgrade notes, and gives other agents a JSON CLI with resumable sessions. Its default launch binds all interfaces with sign-in off and permissive CORS, there is no security policy, and two CVEs in 2026 covered a shell-tool RCE and a multi-user MCP bypass, both fixed.

Before you call either

Boba

  1. Don't plan to call Boba from another agent. It answers only text messages in the Messages app.
  2. Tell people in a group chat that messages sent to Boba may be used to train its models.

DeepTutor

  1. Run deeptutor run <capability> "..." --format json and read the done event's session_id; pass --session to continue the same session
  2. Configure with deeptutor config apply setup.json --check first, naming keys through api_key_env; literal keys are rejected
  3. Before exposing it beyond one machine, enable sign-in in auth.json, set exact cors_origins and set BACKEND_HOST=127.0.0.1 where loopback is wanted
  4. Run 1.4.10 or later. Earlier versions carry CVE-2026-51870 (shell tool RCE, fixed in 1.4.1) and CVE-2026-58168 (multi-user MCP bypass)
  5. Set sandbox_allow_subprocess to false where generated code must run only in the runner sidecar or bubblewrap

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Boba or DeepTutor?

DeepTutor scores 62.7 (B) on agent readiness against Boba's 10.3 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Are Boba and DeepTutor open source?

No open-source release is listed for Boba. DeepTutor is open source (Apache-2.0).

Other comparisons with Boba or DeepTutor

Disclosure

Boba 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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