Head to head · Assistant proactive · October 2026 research run
Instinct vs Lindy
Lindy scores 32.3 (F) on agent readiness against Instinct's 11.4 (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
Instinct F
Best for A consumer assistant for one adult who wants errands done by text or phone call, such as bill disputes, gifts, groceries, appointments and travel, and who accepts that it acts and spends as their agent.
Also in its favour
- No incidents deducted, where Lindy loses 3 points for them
Watch for
No price is published. The terms say fees may apply to certain functions, are charged in US dollars and are non-refundable
Lindy F
Best for Lindy suits a person or small team that lives in Slack and Google or Microsoft mail and wants briefs, drafts, scheduling and meeting notes done on a schedule.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 24 against 5
- Schema & documentation, 32 against 3
- Agent ergonomics, 43 against 5
- Security & auth, 49 against 25
- Payments & pricing, 35 against 0
- Maintenance & community, 9 against 3
Also in its favour
- Free to start without a card
Watch for
The integrations page says approval settings apply in shared Slack threads only. Web chat, Slack direct messages, iMessage and SMS are not covered, and reads are never covered.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Instinct | Lindy | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 5 | 24 | Lindy +19 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 3 | 32 | Lindy +29 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 5 | 43 | Lindy +38 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 25 | 49 | Lindy +24 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 0 | 35 | Lindy +35 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 3 | 9 | Lindy +6 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 51 | 52 | Lindy +1 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -3 | |
| Total | F 11.4/100 | F 32.3/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Instinct | Lindy |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Platform | Platform |
| Vendor | Spear Street Technology, Inc. | Crivello Corp (doing business as Lindy) |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth |
| Pricing | Paid | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Instinct's Terms of Service, which grant personal use only | Proprietary service under Lindy's Terms of Service. No source is published |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | none | 2025-10-21 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-08-26 | 2026-09-24 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-08-26 | 2026-09-28 |
| Customer content may train models | yes, with an opt-out | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | yes |
Verdicts
Instinct
The terms and privacy policy are specific about connected accounts, model training and the risks of autonomous actions, and security.txt is valid. No price, documentation, status page, changelog or programmatic interface is published, and customer content trains AI models unless the owner opts out.
Lindy
Lindy keeps what it remembers in files the owner can read and edit, and publishes credit prices. Its approval setting applies in shared Slack threads only, so writes asked for by direct message, text or web chat run unasked, which its pricing page does not say. It has no status page, and its changelog stops in October 2025.
Before you call either
Instinct
- Do not plan on calling Instinct from a program. No API, MCP server or key was found, and the terms forbid automation software and benchmarking
- A person signs in at app.instinct.com with a phone number and a one-time code by text, and may wait for a place when the service is at capacity
- Tell the owner to opt out of model training at app.instinct.com/settings before connecting mail or files, since training is on by default
- Disconnecting an account does not delete what was indexed from it. Delete that data at app.instinct.com/workspace
- Treat purchases and bookings as final. The terms say actions may not be reversible and that confirmation controls are not guaranteed
Lindy
- Treat a request sent by direct message, text or web chat as unguarded. Approval prompts appear in shared Slack threads only.
- Run a routine as a dry run before turning it on. A dry run reads real data and sends, posts and writes nothing.
- Turn off unused tools after adding an MCP server. Every supported tool arrives switched on, and a large server adds more than a hundred.
- Expect a billed seat for anyone who mentions Lindy in Slack. A teammate who joins that way has seven free days first.
- Connect only hosted MCP servers on public HTTPS with streamable HTTP, the one kind the docs describe.
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Instinct or Lindy?
Lindy scores 32.3 (F) on agent readiness against Instinct's 11.4 (F), and leads in every scored category.
Other comparisons with Instinct or Lindy
- AstrBot vs Instinct
- AstrBot vs Lindy
- CowAgent vs Instinct
- CowAgent vs Lindy
- GAIA vs Instinct
- GAIA vs Lindy
- Gemini Spark vs Instinct
- Gemini Spark vs Lindy
- Grok Bot vs Instinct
- Grok Bot vs Lindy
- Haven vs Instinct
- Haven vs Lindy
- Hermes Agent vs Instinct
- Hermes Agent vs Lindy
- Instinct vs IronClaw
- Instinct vs Leon
- Instinct vs nanobot
- Instinct vs NanoClaw
- Instinct vs Dots
- Instinct vs OpenClaw
- Instinct vs PicoClaw
- Instinct vs Poke
- Instinct vs QwenPaw
- Instinct vs ZeroClaw
- Instinct vs Zo Computer
- IronClaw vs Lindy
- Leon vs Lindy
- Lindy vs nanobot
- Lindy vs NanoClaw
- Lindy vs Dots
- Lindy vs OpenClaw
- Lindy vs PicoClaw
- Lindy vs Poke
- Lindy vs QwenPaw
- Lindy vs ZeroClaw
- Lindy vs Zo Computer
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/instinct-vs-lindy.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/instinct.json·/api/v1/tools/lindy.json - From a terminal
anchor compare instinct lindy(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "instinct", "b": "lindy"}at/mcp, no key