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Head to head · Assistant proactive · October 2026 research run

Grok Bot vs Poke

Grok Bot scores 45.2 (E) on agent readiness against Poke's 37.6 (F), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Poke leads on reliability, payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do assistant proactive.

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

Grok BotSpaceXAI and Cursor (Anysphere, Inc.) · Platform E45.2/100#893 of 986 PokeThe Interaction Company of California Inc. · Platform F37.6/100#955 of 986

Which one, for what

Grok Bot E

Best 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.

Ahead on

  • Agent ergonomics, 50 against 30
  • Security & auth, 68 against 24
  • Transparency & trust, 66 against 58

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

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

  • Reliability, 51 against 40
  • Payments & pricing, 30 against 25
  • Maintenance & community, 31 against 20

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 runGrok BotPokeEdge
Reliability16%204051Poke +11
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.24042Poke +2
Agent ergonomics13%16.25030Grok Bot +20
Security & auth14%17.56824Grok Bot +44
Payments & pricing10%12.52530Poke +5
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.82031Poke +11
Transparency & trust7%8.86658Grok Bot +8
Negative events≤1500
TotalE 45.2/100F 37.6/100

Facts side by side

FactGrok BotPoke
KindPlatformPlatform
VendorSpaceXAI and Cursor (Anysphere, Inc.)The Interaction Company of California Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingPaidFreemium
x402nono
LicenceProprietaryProprietary 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 releasenone2026-06-25
Terms last updated2026-09-032026-03-17
Privacy policy last updated2026-09-292026-09-11
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textyes
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textyes

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.

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

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

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, Grok Bot or Poke?

Grok Bot scores 45.2 (E) on agent readiness against Poke's 37.6 (F), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Poke leads on reliability, payments & pricing and maintenance & community.

Other comparisons with Grok Bot or Poke

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