# Grok Bot vs IronClaw

> IronClaw scores 66.7 (B) to Grok Bot's 45.2 (E) for assistant proactive. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grok-bot-vs-ironclaw
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grok-bot-vs-ironclaw.md (~2,600 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grok-bot-vs-ironclaw.min.md (~630 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grok-bot-vs-ironclaw.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-12

IronClaw scores 66.7 (B) on agent readiness against Grok Bot's 45.2 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do assistant proactive.

- Grok Bot: grade E, 45.2/100, rank #893 of 986. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/grok-bot.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/grok-bot.json
- IronClaw: grade B, 66.7/100, rank #288 of 986. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/ironclaw.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/ironclaw.json
- Best AI personal assistants that act for one person: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/personal-assistants/index.md
- All 190 assistants comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/personal-assistants/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Grok Bot (E)

Good for: A person or team already paying for Cursor or SuperGrok who wants named assistants that keep working on a cloud computer, with routines and Slack or X entry points, and who will write approval rules.

Watch for: All of one user's Bots share one cloud computer, with its files, browser sessions and command-line credentials. The docs say separate Bots are not a security boundary

### IronClaw (B)

Good 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 40
- Schema & documentation, 74 against 40
- Agent ergonomics, 69 against 50
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 25
- Maintenance & community, 74 against 20
- Transparency & trust, 75 against 66

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

| Category | Weight | Grok Bot | IronClaw | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 40 | 67 | IronClaw +27 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 40 | 74 | IronClaw +34 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 50 | 69 | IronClaw +19 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 68 | 66 | Grok Bot +2 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 25 | 60 | IronClaw +35 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 20 | 74 | IronClaw +54 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 66 | 75 | IronClaw +9 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -2 | |
| **Total** | | **45.2 · E** | **66.7 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Grok Bot | IronClaw |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Platform | Agent harness |
| Vendor | SpaceXAI and Cursor (Anysphere, Inc.) | NEAR AI |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports |  | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Paid | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary | MIT OR Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | none | 2026-09-29 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-03 | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-29 | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text |  |
| Popularity | none | 13k stars |

## Verdicts

**Grok Bot.** Connector tokens stay on Cursor's backend and each user gets a separate microVM, with approvals, drafts and a review model before risky actions. All of a user's Bots share one computer and its sign-ins, the review model skips memory writes, and the status page shows seven major Grok Bot incidents since 3 September 2026.

**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

### Grok Bot

1. State in each request what the Bot may change and where it must stop. Which actions pause for approval depends on the tool, the risk and the owner's Auto-review rules
2. Add narrow Ask first rules for sending, publishing, purchasing and deleting. Ask first wins over Allow automatically when both match
3. Treat any sign-in or file on the cloud computer as available to every Bot on the account. Give a workload its own Cursor user when it needs separate credentials
4. Run Test run with safe inputs. A test run performs real work and can call connected tools
5. To remove access, pause routines, sign out of sites on the computer, uninstall connectors and revoke them at the source service. Deleting the Bot is not enough

### 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, Grok Bot or IronClaw?

IronClaw scores 66.7 (B) on agent readiness against Grok Bot's 45.2 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

### Are Grok Bot and IronClaw open source?

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


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grok-bot-vs-ironclaw.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grok-bot-vs-ironclaw.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "grok-bot", "b": "ironclaw"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare grok-bot ironclaw`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/grok-bot.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/ironclaw.json

## Other comparisons with Grok Bot or IronClaw

- [AstrBot vs Grok Bot](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/astrbot-vs-grok-bot.md)
- [AstrBot vs IronClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/astrbot-vs-ironclaw.md)
- [CowAgent vs Grok Bot](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cowagent-vs-grok-bot.md)
- [CowAgent vs IronClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cowagent-vs-ironclaw.md)
- [GAIA vs Grok Bot](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gaia-vs-grok-bot.md)
- [GAIA vs IronClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gaia-vs-ironclaw.md)
- [Gemini Spark vs Grok Bot](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gemini-spark-vs-grok-bot.md)
- [Gemini Spark vs IronClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gemini-spark-vs-ironclaw.md)
- [Grok Bot vs Haven](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grok-bot-vs-haven.md)
- [Grok Bot vs Hermes Agent](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grok-bot-vs-hermes-agent.md)
- [Grok Bot vs Instinct](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grok-bot-vs-instinct.md)
- [Grok Bot vs Leon](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grok-bot-vs-leon.md)
- [Grok Bot vs Lindy](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grok-bot-vs-lindy.md)
- [Grok Bot vs nanobot](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grok-bot-vs-nanobot.md)
- [Grok Bot vs NanoClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grok-bot-vs-nanoclaw.md)
- [Grok Bot vs Dots](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grok-bot-vs-openai-dots.md)
- [Grok Bot vs OpenClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grok-bot-vs-openclaw.md)
- [Grok Bot vs PicoClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grok-bot-vs-picoclaw.md)
- [Grok Bot vs Poke](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grok-bot-vs-poke.md)
- [Grok Bot vs QwenPaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grok-bot-vs-qwenpaw.md)
- [Grok Bot vs ZeroClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grok-bot-vs-zeroclaw.md)
- [Grok Bot vs Zo Computer](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grok-bot-vs-zo-computer.md)
- [Haven vs IronClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/haven-vs-ironclaw.md)
- [Hermes Agent vs IronClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hermes-agent-vs-ironclaw.md)
- [Instinct vs IronClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/instinct-vs-ironclaw.md)
- [IronClaw vs Leon](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-leon.md)
- [IronClaw vs Lindy](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-lindy.md)
- [IronClaw vs nanobot](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-nanobot.md)
- [IronClaw vs NanoClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-nanoclaw.md)
- [IronClaw vs Dots](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-openai-dots.md)
- [IronClaw vs OpenClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-openclaw.md)
- [IronClaw vs PicoClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-picoclaw.md)
- [IronClaw vs Poke](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-poke.md)
- [IronClaw vs QwenPaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-qwenpaw.md)
- [IronClaw vs ZeroClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-zeroclaw.md)
- [IronClaw vs Zo Computer](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-zo-computer.md)