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Head to head · Assistant proactive · October 2026 research run

GAIA vs Poke

GAIA scores 49.5 (D) on agent readiness against Poke's 37.6 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Poke leads on payments & pricing. 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 PokeThe Interaction Company of California Inc. · Platform F37.6/100#955 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.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 67 against 51
  • Schema & documentation, 51 against 42
  • Agent ergonomics, 54 against 30
  • Security & auth, 54 against 24
  • Maintenance & community, 78 against 31

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.

Poke F

Best for One person who wants an assistant in their text messages that reads and drafts mail, manages a calendar and reaches other apps through MCP.

Ahead on

  • Payments & pricing, 30 against 20

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where GAIA loses 5 points for them

Watch for

No documented setting for which actions need approval before Poke sends, deletes or spends. Release notes mention email draft approval only in passing

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runGAIAPokeEdge
Reliability16%206751GAIA +16
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25142GAIA +9
Agent ergonomics13%16.25430GAIA +24
Security & auth14%17.55424GAIA +30
Payments & pricing10%12.52030Poke +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87831GAIA +47
Transparency & trust7%8.86058GAIA +2
Negative events≤15-50
TotalD 49.5/100F 37.6/100

Facts side by side

FactGAIAPoke
KindPlatformPlatform
VendorThe Experience CompanyThe Interaction Company of California Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthOAuthAPI key
PricingPaidFreemium
x402nono
LicencePolyForm-Noncommercial-1.0.0Proprietary service under Poke's Terms of Service. The poke npm package (CLI and Node.js SDK) declares MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-09-142026-06-25
Terms last updated2026-08-142026-03-17
Privacy policy last updated2026-08-072026-09-11
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict automated accessyesyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textyes
Terms or service can change without noticeyesyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesyes
Popularity308 starsnone

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.

Poke

Hosted assistant that answers in Apple Messages, WhatsApp, Telegram and RCS and acts in Gmail, Outlook, calendars and MCP servers. Plan prices and a status page are public. No approval settings, credential storage, model providers or retention periods are documented, and customer content trains models unless Maximum Privacy is selected.

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.

Poke

  1. POST JSON to https://poke.com/api/v1/inbound/api-message with a Bearer key from Kitchen. Legacy pk_ keys work only on the deprecated /api/v1/inbound-sms/webhook
  2. Expect only {"success": true} back. Poke's answer goes to the owner's message thread, not to the caller
  3. Do not retry a POST blindly. No idempotency key is documented, and a repeated message may make Poke act twice
  4. Treat an API key as full access to the owner's mail, calendar and integrations. Create one key per automation and revoke it when done
  5. Avoid the prefilled integration link with apiKey in the query string for real secrets. Enter the key in the form or use npx poke@latest mcp add -k

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, GAIA or Poke?

GAIA scores 49.5 (D) on agent readiness against Poke's 37.6 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Poke leads on payments & pricing.

Other comparisons with GAIA or Poke

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