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

IronClaw vs Zapia

IronClaw scores 66.7 (B) on agent readiness against Zapia's 17.3 (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 ZapiaBrainlogic AI S.A.S. · Platform F17.3/100#995 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 15
  • Schema & documentation, 74 against 0
  • Agent ergonomics, 69 against 0
  • Security & auth, 66 against 3
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
  • Maintenance & community, 74 against 56
  • Transparency & trust, 75 against 59

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

Zapia F

Best for Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking users who want an assistant over their mail, calendar, Drive and WhatsApp in an app.

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, and the terms forbid unauthorised automated connections.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runIronClawZapiaEdge
Reliability16%206715IronClaw +52
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.2740IronClaw +74
Agent ergonomics13%16.2690IronClaw +69
Security & auth14%17.5663IronClaw +63
Payments & pricing10%12.56030IronClaw +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87456IronClaw +18
Transparency & trust7%8.87559IronClaw +16
Negative events≤15-20
TotalB 66.7/100F 17.3/100

Facts side by side

FactIronClawZapia
KindAgent harnessPlatform
VendorNEAR AIBrainlogic AI S.A.S.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicenceMIT OR Apache-2.0Closed service under Zapia's terms and conditions (Brainlogic AI SAS). No date was found on the terms.
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-09-292026-10-12
Terms last updatedno 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.

Zapia

Zapia is a personal assistant app for iOS, Android and the web with a free plan that isn't a trial, weekly iOS releases and explicit confirmation before anything that writes. No outside agent can call it, and no status page, security contact or hosting location was found.

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

Zapia

  1. Don't plan to call Zapia from another agent. It answers only in its own app and on the web, and the terms forbid unauthorised automated access.
  2. Tell the owner that Pro and Ultra trials become paid after 7 days unless cancelled in the app store.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, IronClaw or Zapia?

IronClaw scores 66.7 (B) on agent readiness against Zapia's 17.3 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Are IronClaw and Zapia open source?

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

Other comparisons with IronClaw or Zapia

Disclosure

Zapia 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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