Head to head · Assistant proactive · October 2026 research run

IronClaw vs QwenPaw

IronClaw scores 66.7 (B) on agent readiness against QwenPaw's 62.2 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do assistant proactive.

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

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

  • Schema & documentation, 74 against 68
  • Security & auth, 66 against 60
  • Transparency & trust, 75 against 56

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

QwenPaw B

Best for One person who wants an assistant on Chinese and Western chat apps with scheduled digests, a consumer mailbox and file-based memory, on their own machine and with a model of their choice.

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Runs on your own machine

Watch for

Usage data is on by default, qwenpaw init --defaults accepts it without a prompt, and the opt-out variable is absent from the README and docs

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runIronClawQwenPawEdge
Reliability16%206770QwenPaw +3
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27468IronClaw +6
Agent ergonomics13%16.26967IronClaw +2
Security & auth14%17.56660IronClaw +6
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87473IronClaw +1
Transparency & trust7%8.87556IronClaw +19
Negative events≤15-2-3
TotalB 66.7/100B 62.2/100

Facts side by side

FactIronClawQwenPaw
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorNEAR AIAgentScope
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTPHTTP, stdio
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingFreemiumFree
x402nono
LicenceMIT OR Apache-2.0Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-09-292026-09-11
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 stars36k 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.

QwenPaw

Mail tools ask for approval by default, automatic mail handling may not delete permanently, and the security docs list what each sandbox backend fails to enforce. Usage data is sent by default, the default approval level passes every tool call no rule flags, and no privacy policy or security advisory is published.

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

QwenPaw

  1. Set QWENPAW_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=true before qwenpaw init --defaults or qwenpaw app. Both send usage data without asking
  2. Set approval_level to STRICT or SMART in agent.json. The default AUTO runs every tool call no guard rule flags
  3. Set dm_policy and group_policy to allowlist with allow_from on each channel. Both default to open
  4. Set QWENPAW_AUTH_ENABLED=true before binding beyond 127.0.0.1. Requests from localhost skip login even then
  5. Keep mail tools on ask for send_message, delete_message and delete_thread, and turn on Mail Access Control with automatic handling

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, IronClaw or QwenPaw?

IronClaw scores 66.7 (B) on agent readiness against QwenPaw's 62.2 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories.

Are IronClaw and QwenPaw open source?

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

Other comparisons with IronClaw or QwenPaw

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