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Head to head · Assistant proactive · October 2026 research run

GAIA vs IronClaw

IronClaw scores 66.7 (B) on agent readiness against GAIA's 49.5 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do assistant proactive.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 190 assistants comparisons

GAIAThe Experience Company · Platform D49.5/100#813 of 986 IronClawNEAR AI · Agent harness B66.7/100#288 of 986

Which one, for what

GAIA D

Best for It suits one person who wants mail triage, meeting briefs, todos and scheduled workflows from one assistant reachable on WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord or iMessage, and who wants to read the source.

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

The default approval mode in the source is always_allow, commented as nothing gated, while the privacy policy and the 26 August release notes say destructive actions wait for approval.

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

  • Schema & documentation, 74 against 51
  • Agent ergonomics, 69 against 54
  • Security & auth, 66 against 54
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 20
  • Transparency & trust, 75 against 60

Also in its favour

  • Open source

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 runGAIAIronClawEdge
Reliability16%206767even
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25174IronClaw +23
Agent ergonomics13%16.25469IronClaw +15
Security & auth14%17.55466IronClaw +12
Payments & pricing10%12.52060IronClaw +40
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87874GAIA +4
Transparency & trust7%8.86075IronClaw +15
Negative events≤15-5-2
TotalD 49.5/100B 66.7/100

Facts side by side

FactGAIAIronClaw
KindPlatformAgent harness
VendorThe Experience CompanyNEAR AI
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthOAuthOAuth or key
PricingPaidFreemium
x402nono
LicencePolyForm-Noncommercial-1.0.0MIT OR Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-09-142026-09-29
Terms last updated2026-08-14no document linked
Privacy policy last updated2026-08-07no date given
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticeyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryes
Popularity308 stars13k stars

Verdicts

GAIA

GAIA's source is public, so its approval gate, memory store and token handling can be read. Three approval modes and per-tool overrides exist, but the default mode in the source runs every action unasked, which the privacy policy and release notes do not say. Pro costs $30 a month and self-hosting is limited to noncommercial use.

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

GAIA

  1. Set Settings > Approvals to Always ask or Auto before connecting mail. The default in the source runs every action, including send and delete, without asking.
  2. Expect no public API on the hosted service. The backend turns off its OpenAPI document in production, so reach GAIA through its apps, bots or CLI.
  3. Check the plan before relying on the hosted service. The README and docs describe a Free plan, and the pricing page says GAIA is a paid product.
  4. For self-hosting, prepare Docker, Node.js 20, a WorkOS account and a model key first, and confirm the use is noncommercial under the licence.
  5. Add outside tools as MCP servers by URL on the Integrations page. GAIA asks before adding a server in every approval mode.

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, GAIA or IronClaw?

IronClaw scores 66.7 (B) on agent readiness against GAIA's 49.5 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories.

Are GAIA and IronClaw open source?

No open-source release is listed for GAIA. IronClaw is open source (MIT OR Apache-2.0).

Other comparisons with GAIA or IronClaw

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