Head to head · Assistants that act in your accounts · October 2026 research run
IronClaw vs Tomo
IronClaw scores 66.7 (B) on agent readiness against Tomo's 13.1 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do assistants that act in your accounts.
Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 314 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
- Reliability, 67 against 15
- Schema & documentation, 74 against 0
- Agent ergonomics, 69 against 0
- Security & auth, 66 against 0
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 10
- Maintenance & community, 74 against 54
- Transparency & trust, 75 against 47
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
Tomo F
Best for People who want accountability, check-ins and reminders by text, including in group chats.
No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.
Watch for
No API, MCP server or A2A endpoint for an outside agent.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | IronClaw | Tomo | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 67 | 15 | IronClaw +52 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 74 | 0 | IronClaw +74 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 69 | 0 | IronClaw +69 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 66 | 0 | IronClaw +66 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 60 | 10 | IronClaw +50 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 74 | 54 | IronClaw +20 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 75 | 47 | IronClaw +28 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -2 | 0 | |
| Total | B 66.7/100 | F 13.1/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | IronClaw | Tomo |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Agent harness | Platform |
| Vendor | NEAR AI | Mapo Labs, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT OR Apache-2.0 | Closed service under Tomo's Terms of Service (Mapo Labs, Inc., last updated 24 September 2026). |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 | 2026-09-29 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | |
| Privacy policy last updated | no 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 | ||
| 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.
Tomo
Tomo is a hosted personal AI over iMessage and an iOS app, centred on goals, check-ins and reminders, with regular iOS releases since April 2026. No outside agent can call it, there's no free plan, and no status page, security contact or subprocessor list was found.
Before you call either
IronClaw
- Open Settings and turn off global auto-approve, or set send and delete tools to ask each time, before connecting mail or chat accounts
- Install with the release installer and run
ironclaw onboard. 1.x does not migrate 0.29 data, so use a fresh home directory - Call
POST /api/v1/responseswith the bearer token from~/.ironclaw/reborn/webui-token. Keep under 30 requests in 60 seconds - Resolve approval and OAuth gates in the web interface. The Responses API fails the turn instead of surfacing them
- Connect MCP servers over HTTP only. The stdio transport is rejected
Tomo
- Don't plan to call Tomo from another agent. It answers only the owner's iMessage, group chats it's added to and the iOS app.
- Tell the owner that adding Tomo to a group chat applies its terms to every participant.
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, IronClaw or Tomo?
IronClaw scores 66.7 (B) on agent readiness against Tomo's 13.1 (F), and leads in every scored category.
Are IronClaw and Tomo open source?
IronClaw is open source (MIT OR Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for Tomo.
Other comparisons with IronClaw or Tomo
- AstrBot vs IronClaw
- CowAgent vs IronClaw
- GAIA vs IronClaw
- Gemini Spark vs IronClaw
- Grok Bot vs IronClaw
- Haven vs IronClaw
- Hermes Agent vs IronClaw
- Instinct vs IronClaw
- IronClaw vs Leon
- IronClaw vs Lindy
- IronClaw vs nanobot
- IronClaw vs NanoClaw
- IronClaw vs Dots
- IronClaw vs OpenClaw
- IronClaw vs PicoClaw
- IronClaw vs Poke
- IronClaw vs QwenPaw
- IronClaw vs ZeroClaw
- IronClaw vs Zo Computer
- CowAgent vs Tomo
- GAIA vs Tomo
- Gemini Spark vs Tomo
- Grok Bot vs Tomo
- Haven vs Tomo
- Hermes Agent vs Tomo
- Instinct vs Tomo
- IronClaw vs Natura tinyNature
- IronClaw vs Pally
- IronClaw vs Wajo (Fo)
- Leon vs Tomo
- Lindy vs Tomo
- nanobot vs Tomo
- NanoClaw vs Tomo
- Natura tinyNature vs Tomo
- Dots vs Tomo
- OpenClaw vs Tomo
- Pally vs Tomo
- Poke vs Tomo
- QwenPaw vs Tomo
- Tomo vs Wajo (Fo)
- Tomo vs ZeroClaw
- Tomo vs Zo Computer
- IronClaw vs Talorys
- Talorys vs Tomo
- AstrBot vs Tomo
- PicoClaw vs Tomo
Disclosure
Tomo 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.
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/ironclaw-vs-tomo.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/ironclaw.json·/api/v1/tools/tomo.json - From a terminal
anchor compare ironclaw tomo(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "ironclaw", "b": "tomo"}at/mcp, no key