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

Claude Duet vs Town

Town scores 48.7 (D) on agent readiness against Claude Duet's 17.9 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Claude Duet leads on transparency & trust. Both do proactive personal assistants.

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

Claude DuetAnthropic, PBC · Platform F17.9/100#1162 of 1210 TownTown.com, Inc. · Platform D48.7/100#952 of 1210

Which one, for what

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

  • Transparency & trust, 72 against 63

Watch for

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

Town D

Best for An owner who wants a mail and calendar assistant whose routines other systems can trigger.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 35 against 15
  • Schema & documentation, 33 against 10
  • Agent ergonomics, 49 against 0
  • Security & auth, 79 against 14
  • Payments & pricing, 30 against 10
  • Maintenance & community, 60 against 37

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

The privacy policy describes training with an opt-out and the trust page says training is opt-in.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runClaude DuetTownEdge
Reliability16%201535Town +20
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.21033Town +23
Agent ergonomics13%16.2049Town +49
Security & auth14%17.51479Town +65
Payments & pricing10%12.51030Town +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.83760Town +23
Transparency & trust7%8.87263Claude Duet +9
Negative events≤1500
TotalF 17.9/100D 48.7/100

Facts side by side

FactClaude DuetTown
KindPlatformPlatform
VendorAnthropic, PBCTown.com, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingPaidFreemium
x402nono
LicenceClosed 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.Closed service under Town's Terms of Service (Town.com, Inc., updated 21 July 2026).
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-10-242026-10-10
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 reviews2.3/5 (4)none

Verdicts

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.

Town

Town is a hosted assistant that works across the owner's mail, calendar and work apps, and other systems can start its routines through per-routine webhooks with rotatable secrets, idempotency keys and documented errors. A caller can't read a run's result. The privacy policy and trust page disagree on whether training is on by default.

Before you call either

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

Town

  1. Start a Town routine with POST to its webhook URL, Authorization Bearer whsec_ secret, and application/json or text/plain. Expect 202 only.
  2. Send X-Town-Idempotency-Key with a stable event id on every retry so Town doesn't start a second run.
  3. Treat 404 as wrong secret, disabled endpoint or missing endpoint alike, and ask the owner to check Routine Settings rather than retrying.
  4. Send account_email only if the owner allowed the override. It must match a connected account in full and can't widen the routine's scope.
  5. Ask the owner to keep routines that act on webhook input in approval-required mode, as Town's own docs advise.

Questions

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

Town scores 48.7 (D) on agent readiness against Claude Duet's 17.9 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Claude Duet leads on transparency & trust.

Other comparisons with Claude Duet or Town

Disclosure

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.

Town 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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