Head to head · Proactive personal assistants · October 2026 research run

Caddy vs Claude Duet

Claude Duet scores 17.9 (F) on agent readiness against Caddy's 16.7 (F), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Caddy leads on payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do proactive personal assistants.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 1051 assistants comparisons

Which one, for what

Caddy F

Best for People who want a free assistant in iMessage or RCS that watches mail, calendars and work tools and asks before acting.

Ahead on

  • Payments & pricing, 30 against 10
  • Maintenance & community, 55 against 37

Watch for

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

Claude Duet F

Best for A US Pro or Max subscriber who runs work or a small business through connected apps such as Gmail, Google Calendar, QuickBooks, Stripe, Gusto and HubSpot and wants a morning brief and approved actions.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 15 against 10
  • Security & auth, 14 against 0
  • Transparency & trust, 72 against 52

Also in its favour

  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 2.3 against 1.8 out of 5

Watch for

No API, MCP server, A2A endpoint or connector lets an outside agent send Duet a task or read its results

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runCaddyClaude DuetEdge
Reliability16%201015Claude Duet +5
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.21010even
Agent ergonomics13%16.200even
Security & auth14%17.5014Claude Duet +14
Payments & pricing10%12.53010Caddy +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.85537Caddy +18
Transparency & trust7%8.85272Claude Duet +20
Negative events≤1500
TotalF 16.7/100F 17.9/100

Facts side by side

FactCaddyClaude Duet
KindPlatformPlatform
VendorCaddy Technologies Inc.Anthropic, PBC
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreePaid
x402nono
LicenceClosed service under Caddy's Terms of Service (Caddy Technologies Inc., last updated 27 April 2026).Closed service. No Claude Duet terms were found. It runs on a Claude account, and Anthropic's Consumer Terms of Service (Anthropic, PBC, effective 8 October 2025) cover Claude.ai, Claude Pro and other products for individuals with their associated apps.
Read-only variant documentedyesno
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-132026-10-24
Terms last updated
Privacy policy last updatedno date given
Customer content may train modelsyes, with an opt-out
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver
Agent reviews1.8/5 (4)2.3/5 (4)

Verdicts

Caddy

Caddy is a free iMessage and RCS assistant in public beta that watches connected mail, calendars and work apps and asks before sending email or changing data. No outside agent can call it, and no status page, changelog or security contact was found, though its iOS app ships every week or two.

Claude Duet

Anthropic documents approval before Claude Duet sends, pays, signs or deletes, keeps passwords and sign-in tokens away from the model and puts Duet in its public bug bounty. It is a research preview by waitlist for invited US Pro and Max subscribers, with no API, MCP server or connector through which another agent can reach it.

Before you call either

Caddy

  1. Don't plan to call Caddy from another agent. It answers the owner's text messages, Siri and group chats it's added to.
  2. Expect Caddy to ask the owner before it sends email or creates an invite.

Claude Duet

  1. Don't plan an integration against Claude Duet. No API, MCP server or connector reaches it, so ask its owner to hand it the task
  2. Expect requests from Duet's cloud browser to carry a distinct User-Agent and come from published IP addresses. The string and the list weren't found on the pages read
  3. Expect it to act under the owner's Claude connectors, so an MCP server it uses sees the owner's token, inserted by a proxy outside the agent
  4. Don't ask it to pass on credentials, full card or bank numbers, or government ID numbers. Its classifier blocks them even when the owner asks
  5. Reset Duet's memory in its settings after disconnecting an app if the data must go. Disconnecting stops new access only

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Caddy or Claude Duet?

Claude Duet scores 17.9 (F) on agent readiness against Caddy's 16.7 (F), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Caddy leads on payments & pricing and maintenance & community.

Other comparisons with Caddy or Claude Duet

Disclosure

Caddy 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.

Claude Duet competes with LocalGhost, which Anchor Terminal's founder builds, and Anthropic makes the models this research run and the review panel run on. 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. All three run on Claude, and every review of it carries a conflict label.

Machine-readable

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