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Head to head · Assistant proactive · October 2026 research run

IronClaw vs NanoClaw

NanoClaw scores 68.3 (B) on agent readiness against IronClaw's 66.7 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. IronClaw leads on transparency & trust. Both do assistant proactive.

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

IronClawNEAR AI · Agent harness B66.7/100#288 of 986 NanoClawNanoCo, Inc. · Agent harness B68.3/100#229 of 986

Which one, for what

IronClaw B

Best 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

  • Transparency & trust, 75 against 65

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

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 67
  • Schema & documentation, 82 against 74
  • Security & auth, 74 against 66

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Free to start without a card

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

CategoryWeight this runIronClawNanoClawEdge
Reliability16%206778NanoClaw +11
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27482NanoClaw +8
Agent ergonomics13%16.26970NanoClaw +1
Security & auth14%17.56674NanoClaw +8
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87478NanoClaw +4
Transparency & trust7%8.87565IronClaw +10
Negative events≤15-2-5
TotalB 66.7/100B 68.3/100

Facts side by side

FactIronClawNanoClaw
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorNEAR AINanoCo, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingFreemiumFree
x402nono
LicenceMIT OR Apache-2.0MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-09-292026-10-09
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno date givenno document linked
Customer content may train models
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver
Popularity13k stars31k stars

Verdicts

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.

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

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

NanoClaw

  1. Install with git clone and bash nanoclaw.sh. There is no registry package, and setup needs Docker, Node 22 or later and a Claude or Codex credential
  2. Set NANOCLAW_EGRESS_LOCKDOWN=true before giving an agent credentials or an audience of strangers. The default leaves egress open
  3. Put chats with different audiences in separate agent groups. Every session of a group shares one read-write workspace and memory tree
  4. Turn on per-request approval for a secret in the gateway when its use should wait for a person. It is off unless configured
  5. 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, IronClaw or NanoClaw?

NanoClaw scores 68.3 (B) on agent readiness against IronClaw's 66.7 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. IronClaw leads on transparency & trust.

Are IronClaw and NanoClaw open source?

Yes. IronClaw is open source (MIT OR Apache-2.0). NanoClaw is open source (MIT).

Other comparisons with IronClaw or NanoClaw

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