Head to head · Assistant proactive · October 2026 research run
Haven vs NanoClaw
NanoClaw scores 68.3 (B) on agent readiness against Haven's 22.2 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do assistant proactive.
Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 190 assistants comparisons
Which one, for what
Haven F
Best for A consumer assistant for one person who wants to phone, text or email it and have it remember them.
Also in its favour
- No incidents deducted, where NanoClaw loses 5 points for them
Watch for
No approval setting or list of actions that need confirmation was found on the public pages. The terms say it sends emails, SMS and calls following the user's instructions.
NanoClaw B
Best for A technical owner who wants an assistant on their own machine, reachable from chat apps, with container isolation and scheduled tasks, and who is willing to keep a fork.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 78 against 35
- Schema & documentation, 82 against 4
- Agent ergonomics, 70 against 6
- Security & auth, 74 against 13
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
- Maintenance & community, 78 against 35
- Transparency & trust, 65 against 51
Also in its favour
- No key needed to call it
- Free to start without a card
- Open source
Watch for
The Claude provider runs with permissionMode: 'bypassPermissions', so shell, file and web tools run inside the container with no prompt
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Haven | NanoClaw | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 35 | 78 | NanoClaw +43 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 4 | 82 | NanoClaw +78 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 6 | 70 | NanoClaw +64 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 13 | 74 | NanoClaw +61 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 30 | 60 | NanoClaw +30 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 35 | 78 | NanoClaw +43 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 51 | 65 | NanoClaw +14 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -5 | |
| Total | F 22.2/100 | B 68.3/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Haven | NanoClaw |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Platform | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Hello Haven, Inc. | NanoCo, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Hello Haven's Terms of Service | MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-17 | 2026-10-09 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-07-24 | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-07-24 | no document linked |
| 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 | 31k stars |
Verdicts
Haven
Haven answers by phone call, text, email and app, is free in beta with no card, and publishes a status page with dated incidents. No public page read says which actions need approval, which accounts it connects or how their tokens are kept, and it names no model provider or sub-processor.
NanoClaw
Each session runs in an unprivileged Docker container and API keys stay in a credential gateway on the host, so a manipulated agent cannot read them. Inside the container the agent runs with permission prompts off, network egress is open by default, and it can message any chat it is wired to without approval.
Before you call either
Haven
- Haven has no documented API or MCP server. An outside agent can reach it only through the owner's channels (call, SMS, email, app).
- Do not assume an approval step before Haven sends mail, texts or calls. None is documented on the public pages.
- Email Haven sends to other people names Hello Haven as sender and says it was sent on the user's behalf, per the terms.
- Chat messages, history, profile context and uploaded files go to third-party AI model providers that the vendor does not name.
- Check status.hellohaven.ai before relying on phone or voice. All four published incidents affected those channels.
NanoClaw
- Install with
git cloneandbash nanoclaw.sh. There is no registry package, and setup needs Docker, Node 22 or later and a Claude or Codex credential - Set
NANOCLAW_EGRESS_LOCKDOWN=truebefore giving an agent credentials or an audience of strangers. The default leaves egress open - Put chats with different audiences in separate agent groups. Every session of a group shares one read-write workspace and memory tree
- Turn on per-request approval for a secret in the gateway when its use should wait for a person. It is off unless configured
- On OneCLI installs, move the gateway to 1.42.0 by the upgrade guide before updating to 2026.10.0. The updater stops until that is done
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Haven or NanoClaw?
NanoClaw scores 68.3 (B) on agent readiness against Haven's 22.2 (F), and leads in every scored category.
Are Haven and NanoClaw open source?
No open-source release is listed for Haven. NanoClaw is open source (MIT).
Other comparisons with Haven or NanoClaw
- AstrBot vs Haven
- AstrBot vs NanoClaw
- CowAgent vs Haven
- CowAgent vs NanoClaw
- GAIA vs Haven
- GAIA vs NanoClaw
- Gemini Spark vs Haven
- Gemini Spark vs NanoClaw
- Grok Bot vs Haven
- Grok Bot vs NanoClaw
- Haven vs Hermes Agent
- Haven vs Instinct
- Haven vs IronClaw
- Haven vs Leon
- Haven vs Lindy
- Haven vs nanobot
- Haven vs Dots
- Haven vs OpenClaw
- Haven vs PicoClaw
- Haven vs Poke
- Haven vs QwenPaw
- Haven vs ZeroClaw
- Haven vs Zo Computer
- Hermes Agent vs NanoClaw
- Instinct vs NanoClaw
- IronClaw vs NanoClaw
- Leon vs NanoClaw
- Lindy vs NanoClaw
- nanobot vs NanoClaw
- NanoClaw vs Dots
- NanoClaw vs OpenClaw
- NanoClaw vs PicoClaw
- NanoClaw vs Poke
- NanoClaw vs QwenPaw
- NanoClaw vs ZeroClaw
- NanoClaw vs Zo Computer
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/haven-vs-nanoclaw.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/haven.json·/api/v1/tools/nanoclaw.json - From a terminal
anchor compare haven nanoclaw(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "haven", "b": "nanoclaw"}at/mcp, no key