Get an audit

Head to head · Assistant proactive · October 2026 research run

Gemini Spark vs IronClaw

IronClaw scores 66.7 (B) on agent readiness against Gemini Spark's 24.5 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do assistant proactive.

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

Gemini SparkGoogle LLC · Platform F24.5/100#974 of 986 IronClawNEAR AI · Agent harness B66.7/100#288 of 986

Which one, for what

Gemini Spark F

Best for A person who already keeps mail, calendar and files in a personal Google Account and accepts Keep Activity being on.

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

Watch for

No public API, SDK or MCP server for an outside agent was found. Spark is reached in the Gemini mobile app, the Mac app and gemini.google.com

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

  • Reliability, 67 against 14
  • Schema & documentation, 74 against 17
  • Agent ergonomics, 69 against 9
  • Security & auth, 66 against 60
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 10
  • Maintenance & community, 74 against 17
  • Transparency & trust, 75 against 49

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 runGemini SparkIronClawEdge
Reliability16%201467IronClaw +53
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.21774IronClaw +57
Agent ergonomics13%16.2969IronClaw +60
Security & auth14%17.56066IronClaw +6
Payments & pricing10%12.51060IronClaw +50
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.81774IronClaw +57
Transparency & trust7%8.84975IronClaw +26
Negative events≤150-2
TotalF 24.5/100B 66.7/100

Facts side by side

FactGemini SparkIronClaw
KindPlatformAgent harness
VendorGoogle LLCNEAR AI
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthOAuthOAuth or key
PricingPaidFreemium
x402nono
LicenceProprietary hosted service under the Google Terms of ServiceMIT OR Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-05-192026-09-29
Terms last updated2026-07-30no document linked
Privacy policy last updated2026-09-24no date given
Customer content may train modelsyes, with an opt-out
Terms restrict automated accessyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the text
Popularitynone13k stars

Verdicts

Gemini Spark

Google's help pages state what Spark confirms before doing, how to delete its remote browser and code data, and the risks of prompt injection. Spark has no public API, Google calls it experimental, and it runs only with Keep Activity on, the setting under which chats are used for model training and human review.

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

Gemini Spark

  1. Do not plan an integration against Spark. No public API or MCP server was found, and a person must hold a Google AI Pro or Ultra subscription
  2. Expect a confirmation request before sends, edits, purchases and web form submissions, and note that bulk changes to private Google Tasks run without one
  3. Delete remote browser data and remote code execution data in Gemini Spark Settings after a sensitive session. Deleting a task thread or Gemini Apps activity does not remove them
  4. Keep within 15 running tasks and 50 active schedules. A schedule does not run when 15 tasks are running or the usage limit is reached
  5. Treat every safety statement here as Google's own description. None was tested, and no message was sent to the service

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, Gemini Spark or IronClaw?

IronClaw scores 66.7 (B) on agent readiness against Gemini Spark's 24.5 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Are Gemini Spark and IronClaw open source?

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

Other comparisons with Gemini Spark or IronClaw

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.

Get an auditSee a sample report