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

CategoryWeight this runInstinctLindyEdge
Reliability16%20524Lindy +19
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.2332Lindy +29
Agent ergonomics13%16.2543Lindy +38
Security & auth14%17.52549Lindy +24
Payments & pricing10%12.5035Lindy +35
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.839Lindy +6
Transparency & trust7%8.85152Lindy +1
Negative events≤150-3
TotalF 11.4/100F 32.3/100

Facts side by side

FactInstinctLindy
KindPlatformPlatform
VendorSpear Street Technology, Inc.Crivello Corp (doing business as Lindy)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth
PricingPaidPaid
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under Instinct's Terms of Service, which grant personal use onlyProprietary service under Lindy's Terms of Service. No source is published
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last releasenone2025-10-21
Terms last updated2026-08-262026-09-24
Privacy policy last updated2026-08-262026-09-28
Customer content may train modelsyes, with an opt-outnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyesyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesyes

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

  1. 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
  2. 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
  3. 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
  4. Disconnecting an account does not delete what was indexed from it. Delete that data at app.instinct.com/workspace
  5. Treat purchases and bookings as final. The terms say actions may not be reversible and that confirmation controls are not guaranteed

Lindy

  1. Treat a request sent by direct message, text or web chat as unguarded. Approval prompts appear in shared Slack threads only.
  2. Run a routine as a dry run before turning it on. A dry run reads real data and sends, posts and writes nothing.
  3. Turn off unused tools after adding an MCP server. Every supported tool arrives switched on, and a large server adds more than a hundred.
  4. Expect a billed seat for anyone who mentions Lindy in Slack. A teammate who joins that way has seven free days first.
  5. 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

Machine-readable

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