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Head to head · Assistants reached by message · October 2026 research run

IronClaw vs szn

IronClaw scores 66.7 (B) on agent readiness against szn's 7.3 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do assistants reached by message.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 834 assistants comparisons

IronClawNEAR AI · Agent harness B66.7/100#288 of 1010 sznNomadic Futures · Platform F7.3/100#1010 of 1010

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

  • Reliability, 67 against 5
  • Schema & documentation, 74 against 10
  • Agent ergonomics, 69 against 0
  • Security & auth, 66 against 0
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 20
  • Maintenance & community, 74 against 2
  • Transparency & trust, 75 against 23

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

szn F

Best for A person who wants calls, emails and bookings done for them and has an access code.

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

Early access by access code only.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runIronClawsznEdge
Reliability16%20675IronClaw +62
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27410IronClaw +64
Agent ergonomics13%16.2690IronClaw +69
Security & auth14%17.5660IronClaw +66
Payments & pricing10%12.56020IronClaw +40
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8742IronClaw +72
Transparency & trust7%8.87523IronClaw +52
Negative events≤15-20
TotalB 66.7/100F 7.3/100

Facts side by side

FactIronClawszn
KindAgent harnessPlatform
VendorNEAR AINomadic Futures
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFree
x402nono
LicenceMIT OR Apache-2.0Closed service. No terms of service were found on theszn.ai. A privacy policy and an acceptable use policy (both last updated March 2026) apply.
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-09-29none
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno date given
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 starsnone

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.

szn

szn is an errand assistant in early access that makes calls, sends emails and books for its owner, free during the preview for people with an access code. No outside agent can call it, no terms of service or legal entity appear in its policies, and its privacy policy says nothing on training.

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

szn

  1. Don't plan to call szn from another agent. It answers only its web app, iMessage, SMS and email for the owner.
  2. Tell the owner they need an access code to start, and that the acceptable use policy makes them responsible for confirming actions.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, IronClaw or szn?

IronClaw scores 66.7 (B) on agent readiness against szn's 7.3 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Are IronClaw and szn open source?

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

Other comparisons with IronClaw or szn

Disclosure

szn competes with LocalGhost, which Anchor Terminal's founder builds. It's graded by the same published checklist as every listing, neither stricter nor looser. Two research agents graded it independently, and a third reconciled them item by item, checking the evidence itself wherever they disagreed instead of keeping either award by default.

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