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

Del vs nanobot

nanobot scores 62.4 (B) on agent readiness against Del's 20.6 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Del leads on transparency & trust. Both do assistants reached by message.

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

DelHuman Interface, Inc. · Platform F20.6/100#991 of 1010 nanobotHKUDS · Agent harness B62.4/100#446 of 1010

Which one, for what

Del F

Best for People who want tasks, notes, reminders and Gmail handled by text on the channel they already use.

Ahead on

  • Transparency & trust, 57 against 48

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card
  • No incidents deducted, where nanobot loses 6 points for them

Watch for

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

nanobot B

Best for A technical owner who wants an assistant on their own machine across many chat apps, with file-based memory and a free choice of model.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 70 against 25
  • Schema & documentation, 77 against 10
  • Agent ergonomics, 74 against 0
  • Security & auth, 63 against 0
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
  • Maintenance & community, 82 against 60

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Open source

Watch for

No per-action approval was found in the docs or source. The agent sends messages, runs shell commands and edits files without asking

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDelnanobotEdge
Reliability16%202570nanobot +45
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.21077nanobot +67
Agent ergonomics13%16.2074nanobot +74
Security & auth14%17.5063nanobot +63
Payments & pricing10%12.53060nanobot +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.86082nanobot +22
Transparency & trust7%8.85748Del +9
Negative events≤150-6
TotalF 20.6/100B 62.4/100

Facts side by side

FactDelnanobot
KindPlatformAgent harness
VendorHuman Interface, Inc.HKUDS
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingPaidFree
x402nono
LicenceClosed service under Del's Terms of Service (Human Interface, Inc., a Delaware corporation, last updated 5 August 2026).MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-072026-09-15
Terms last updatedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno 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
Popularitynone49k stars

Verdicts

Del

Del is a hosted texting assistant and task workspace across iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram, SMS, Discord and Slack, with a near-daily public changelog and a card-free 14-day trial. No outside agent can call it, no status page or security contact was found, and recent updates let some email actions skip approval.

nanobot

nanobot runs on the owner's machine under the MIT licence, with no telemetry found in its source and memory kept as files the owner can read and restore. No per-action approval step was found, and the shell sandbox and workspace restriction are off by default. Five security advisories were published between March and September 2026, all with fixes.

Before you call either

Del

  1. Don't plan to call Del from another agent. It answers only the owner's messaging threads and web workspace.
  2. Tell the owner web browsing tasks are limited to five a month on Standard and unlimited on Pro.

nanobot

  1. Set tools.restrictToWorkspace to true and tools.exec.sandbox to bwrap or seatbelt before giving it real accounts. Both are off by default
  2. Run 0.3.0 or later. Earlier versions carry the published SSRF flaw in web fetch (GHSA-vc5v-6vwm-wf9m)
  3. Keep allowFrom narrow on every channel and never set ["*"] on Email, which has no pairing
  4. Write secrets as ${VAR} references in ~/.nanobot/config.json. Plain values are stored in clear text
  5. Use nanobot -m "..." for a one-shot run, and keep nanobot gateway running for channels, schedules and heartbeat

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Del or nanobot?

nanobot scores 62.4 (B) on agent readiness against Del's 20.6 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Del leads on transparency & trust.

Are Del and nanobot open source?

No open-source release is listed for Del. nanobot is open source (MIT).

Other comparisons with Del or nanobot

Disclosure

Del 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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