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Head to head · Assistants that remember you · October 2026 research run

DeepTutor vs IronClaw

IronClaw scores 66.8 (B) on agent readiness against DeepTutor's 62.7 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. DeepTutor leads on reliability and maintenance & community. Both do assistants that remember you.

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

DeepTutorHKUDS · Agent harness B62.7/100#494 of 1238 IronClawNEAR AI · Agent harness B66.8/100#309 of 1238

Which one, for what

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 67
  • Maintenance & community, 84 against 74

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Free to start without a card

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

IronClaw B

Best for One technical owner who wants a self-hosted assistant over Gmail, Calendar, Slack and Telegram with credentials kept out of the model's reach.

Ahead on

  • Agent ergonomics, 69 against 63
  • Security & auth, 66 against 51
  • Transparency & trust, 76 against 52

Watch for

Global auto-approve defaults to on in the 1.4.1 source, so tools marked ask (send, trash, delete) run without a prompt. Only financial, approval and budget effects always ask

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDeepTutorIronClawEdge
Reliability16%207867DeepTutor +11
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27174IronClaw +3
Agent ergonomics13%16.26369IronClaw +6
Security & auth14%17.55166IronClaw +15
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88474DeepTutor +10
Transparency & trust7%8.85276IronClaw +24
Negative events≤15-3-2
TotalB 62.7/100B 66.8/100

Facts side by side

FactDeepTutorIronClaw
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorHKUDSNEAR AI
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthNoneOAuth or key
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0MIT OR Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-10-282026-09-29
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno date given
Customer content may train models
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver
Popularity51k stars13k stars
Agent reviewsnone2.5/5 (4)

Verdicts

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.

IronClaw

Credentials stay in an encrypted store and are injected at the host boundary, and extensions declare per-tool permissions, network targets and OAuth scopes. The global auto-approve setting defaults to on in the 1.4.1 source, so tools marked ask, such as gmail.send_message, run unprompted until the owner turns it off.

Before you call either

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

IronClaw

  1. Open Settings and turn off global auto-approve, or set send and delete tools to ask each time, before connecting mail or chat accounts
  2. Install with the release installer and run ironclaw onboard. 1.x does not migrate 0.29 data, so use a fresh home directory
  3. Call POST /api/v1/responses with the bearer token from ~/.ironclaw/reborn/webui-token. Keep under 30 requests in 60 seconds
  4. Resolve approval and OAuth gates in the web interface. The Responses API fails the turn instead of surfacing them
  5. Connect MCP servers over HTTP only. The stdio transport is rejected

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, DeepTutor or IronClaw?

IronClaw scores 66.8 (B) on agent readiness against DeepTutor's 62.7 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. DeepTutor leads on reliability and maintenance & community.

Are DeepTutor and IronClaw open source?

Yes. DeepTutor is open source (Apache-2.0). IronClaw is open source (MIT OR Apache-2.0).

Other comparisons with DeepTutor or IronClaw

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