Head to head · Assistants reached by message · October 2026 research run
Boba vs QwenPaw
QwenPaw scores 62.2 (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 834 assistants comparisons
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
- No incidents deducted, where QwenPaw loses 3 points for them
Watch for
No API, MCP server or A2A endpoint for an outside agent.
QwenPaw B
Best for One person who wants an assistant on Chinese and Western chat apps with scheduled digests, a consumer mailbox and file-based memory, on their own machine and with a model of their choice.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 70 against 15
- Schema & documentation, 68 against 0
- Agent ergonomics, 67 against 0
- Security & auth, 60 against 0
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
- Maintenance & community, 73 against 2
- Transparency & trust, 56 against 39
Also in its favour
- No key needed to call it
- Runs on your own machine
- Open source
Watch for
Usage data is on by default, qwenpaw init --defaults accepts it without a prompt, and the opt-out variable is absent from the README and docs
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Boba | QwenPaw | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 15 | 70 | QwenPaw +55 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 0 | 68 | QwenPaw +68 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 0 | 67 | QwenPaw +67 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 0 | 60 | QwenPaw +60 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 30 | 60 | QwenPaw +30 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 2 | 73 | QwenPaw +71 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 39 | 56 | QwenPaw +17 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -3 | |
| Total | F 10.3/100 | B 62.2/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Boba | QwenPaw |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Platform | Agent harness |
| Vendor | humans& ai, inc. | AgentScope |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Closed service under Boba's Terms of Service (humans& ai, inc., last updated 5 October 2026). | Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | none | 2026-09-11 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | |
| Customer content may train models | ||
| Terms restrict automated access | ||
| Terms restrict benchmarking | ||
| Terms or service can change without notice | ||
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | ||
| Popularity | none | 36k stars |
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.
QwenPaw
Mail tools ask for approval by default, automatic mail handling may not delete permanently, and the security docs list what each sandbox backend fails to enforce. Usage data is sent by default, the default approval level passes every tool call no rule flags, and no privacy policy or security advisory is published.
Before you call either
Boba
- Don't plan to call Boba from another agent. It answers only text messages in the Messages app.
- Tell people in a group chat that messages sent to Boba may be used to train its models.
QwenPaw
- Set
QWENPAW_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=truebeforeqwenpaw init --defaultsorqwenpaw app. Both send usage data without asking - Set
approval_leveltoSTRICTorSMARTinagent.json. The defaultAUTOruns every tool call no guard rule flags - Set
dm_policyandgroup_policytoallowlistwithallow_fromon each channel. Both default toopen - Set
QWENPAW_AUTH_ENABLED=truebefore binding beyond 127.0.0.1. Requests from localhost skip login even then - Keep mail tools on
askforsend_message,delete_messageanddelete_thread, and turn on Mail Access Control with automatic handling
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Boba or QwenPaw?
QwenPaw scores 62.2 (B) on agent readiness against Boba's 10.3 (F), and leads in every scored category.
Are Boba and QwenPaw open source?
No open-source release is listed for Boba. QwenPaw is open source (Apache-2.0).
Other comparisons with Boba or QwenPaw
- asaply vs Boba
- asaply vs QwenPaw
- Asmi vs Boba
- Asmi vs QwenPaw
- AstrBot vs Boba
- Boba vs Boski
- Boba vs Brea
- Boba vs Caddy
- Boba vs CowAgent
- Boba vs Del
- Boba vs folk
- Boba vs GAIA
- Boba vs Grok Bot
- Boba vs Haven
- Boba vs Hermes Agent
- Boba vs HireAlpha
- Boba vs Instinct
- Boba vs IronClaw
- Boba vs Lindy
- Boba vs nanobot
- Boba vs NanoClaw
- Boba vs Natura tinyNature
- Boba vs Dots
- Boba vs OpenClaw
- Boba vs OpenInstinct
- Boba vs Orbits
- Boba vs Orchid
- Boba vs Pally
- Boba vs PicoClaw
- Boba vs Poke
- Boba vs szn
- Boba vs Tab
- Boba vs Tomo
- Boba vs Town
- Boba vs Zapia
- Boba vs ZeroClaw
- Boba vs Zo Computer
- Brea vs QwenPaw
- Del vs QwenPaw
- HireAlpha vs QwenPaw
- OpenInstinct vs QwenPaw
- Orbits vs QwenPaw
- Orchid vs QwenPaw
- QwenPaw vs szn
- QwenPaw vs Tab
- QwenPaw vs Zapia
- AstrBot vs QwenPaw
- Boski vs QwenPaw
- Caddy vs QwenPaw
- CowAgent vs QwenPaw
- folk vs QwenPaw
- GAIA vs QwenPaw
- Gemini Spark vs QwenPaw
- Grok Bot vs QwenPaw
- Haven vs QwenPaw
- Hermes Agent vs QwenPaw
- Instinct vs QwenPaw
- IronClaw vs QwenPaw
- Leon vs QwenPaw
- Lindy vs QwenPaw
- nanobot vs QwenPaw
- NanoClaw vs QwenPaw
- Dots vs QwenPaw
- OpenClaw vs QwenPaw
- PicoClaw vs QwenPaw
- Poke vs QwenPaw
- QwenPaw vs Town
- QwenPaw vs ZeroClaw
- QwenPaw vs Zo Computer
- Natura tinyNature vs QwenPaw
- Pally vs QwenPaw
- QwenPaw vs Tomo
- QwenPaw vs Wajo (Fo)
- Boba vs Gemini Spark
- Boba vs Leon
- Boba vs Talorys
- Boba vs Wajo (Fo)
- QwenPaw vs Talorys
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.
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/boba-vs-qwenpaw.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/boba.json·/api/v1/tools/qwenpaw.json - From a terminal
anchor compare boba qwenpaw(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "boba", "b": "qwenpaw"}at/mcp, no key