# IronClaw vs Poke

> IronClaw scores 66.7 (B) to Poke's 37.6 (F) for assistant proactive. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-poke
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-poke.md (~2,550 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-poke.min.md (~630 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-poke.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-12

IronClaw scores 66.7 (B) on agent readiness against Poke's 37.6 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do assistant proactive.

- IronClaw: grade B, 66.7/100, rank #288 of 986. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/ironclaw.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/ironclaw.json
- Poke: grade F, 37.6/100, rank #955 of 986. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/poke.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/poke.json
- Best AI personal assistants that act for one person: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/personal-assistants/index.md
- All 190 assistants comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/personal-assistants/index.md

## Which one, for what

### IronClaw (B)

Good 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:
- Reliability, 67 against 51
- Schema & documentation, 74 against 42
- Agent ergonomics, 69 against 30
- Security & auth, 66 against 24
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
- Maintenance & community, 74 against 31
- Transparency & trust, 75 against 58

Also in its favour:
- Open source

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

### Poke (F)

Good 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.

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

| Category | Weight | IronClaw | Poke | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 67 | 51 | IronClaw +16 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 74 | 42 | IronClaw +32 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 69 | 30 | IronClaw +39 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 66 | 24 | IronClaw +42 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 30 | IronClaw +30 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 74 | 31 | IronClaw +43 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 75 | 58 | IronClaw +17 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -2 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **66.7 · B** | **37.6 · F** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | IronClaw | Poke |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent harness | Platform |
| Vendor | NEAR AI | The Interaction Company of California Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT OR Apache-2.0 | Proprietary service under Poke's Terms of Service. The `poke` npm package (CLI and Node.js SDK) declares MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 | 2026-06-25 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2026-03-17 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2026-09-11 |
| Customer content may train models |  | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access |  | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  | yes |
| Popularity | 13k stars | none |

## 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.

**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

### 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

### 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, IronClaw or Poke?

IronClaw scores 66.7 (B) on agent readiness against Poke's 37.6 (F), and leads in every scored category.

### Are IronClaw and Poke open source?

IronClaw is open source (MIT OR Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for Poke.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-poke.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-poke.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "ironclaw", "b": "poke"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare ironclaw poke`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/ironclaw.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/poke.json

## Other comparisons with IronClaw or Poke

- [AstrBot vs IronClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/astrbot-vs-ironclaw.md)
- [AstrBot vs Poke](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/astrbot-vs-poke.md)
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- [Gemini Spark vs IronClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/gemini-spark-vs-ironclaw.md)
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- [Grok Bot vs IronClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grok-bot-vs-ironclaw.md)
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- [Haven vs Poke](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/haven-vs-poke.md)
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- [Hermes Agent vs Poke](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/hermes-agent-vs-poke.md)
- [Instinct vs IronClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/instinct-vs-ironclaw.md)
- [Instinct vs Poke](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/instinct-vs-poke.md)
- [IronClaw vs Leon](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-leon.md)
- [IronClaw vs Lindy](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-lindy.md)
- [IronClaw vs nanobot](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-nanobot.md)
- [IronClaw vs NanoClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-nanoclaw.md)
- [IronClaw vs Dots](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-openai-dots.md)
- [IronClaw vs OpenClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-openclaw.md)
- [IronClaw vs PicoClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-picoclaw.md)
- [IronClaw vs QwenPaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-qwenpaw.md)
- [IronClaw vs ZeroClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-zeroclaw.md)
- [IronClaw vs Zo Computer](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-zo-computer.md)
- [Leon vs Poke](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/leon-vs-poke.md)
- [Lindy vs Poke](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lindy-vs-poke.md)
- [nanobot vs Poke](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nanobot-vs-poke.md)
- [NanoClaw vs Poke](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nanoclaw-vs-poke.md)
- [Dots vs Poke](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/openai-dots-vs-poke.md)
- [OpenClaw vs Poke](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/openclaw-vs-poke.md)
- [PicoClaw vs Poke](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/picoclaw-vs-poke.md)
- [Poke vs QwenPaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/poke-vs-qwenpaw.md)
- [Poke vs ZeroClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/poke-vs-zeroclaw.md)
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