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

Boba vs Poke

Poke scores 37.6 (F) on agent readiness against Boba's 10.3 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do assistants reached by message.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 834 assistants comparisons

Bobahumans& ai, inc. · Platform F10.3/100#1004 of 1010 PokeThe Interaction Company of California Inc. · Platform F37.6/100#960 of 1010

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

  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

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

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

  • Reliability, 51 against 15
  • Schema & documentation, 42 against 0
  • Agent ergonomics, 30 against 0
  • Security & auth, 24 against 0
  • Maintenance & community, 31 against 2
  • Transparency & trust, 58 against 39

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 runBobaPokeEdge
Reliability16%201551Poke +36
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.2042Poke +42
Agent ergonomics13%16.2030Poke +30
Security & auth14%17.5024Poke +24
Payments & pricing10%12.53030even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8231Poke +29
Transparency & trust7%8.83958Poke +19
Negative events≤1500
TotalF 10.3/100F 37.6/100

Facts side by side

FactBobaPoke
KindPlatformPlatform
Vendorhumans& ai, inc.The Interaction Company of California Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceClosed service under Boba's Terms of Service (humans& ai, inc., last updated 5 October 2026).Proprietary 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 releasenone2026-06-25
Terms last updated2026-03-17
Privacy policy last updated2026-09-11
Customer content may train modelsyes
Terms restrict automated accessyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingyes
Terms or service can change without noticeyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryes

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.

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

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.

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, Boba or Poke?

Poke scores 37.6 (F) on agent readiness against Boba's 10.3 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

Other comparisons with Boba or Poke

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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