Head to head · Assistant proactive · October 2026 research run

IronClaw vs ZeroClaw

ZeroClaw scores 70.2 (BB) on agent readiness against IronClaw's 66.7 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. IronClaw leads on transparency & trust. 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

  • Transparency & trust, 75 against 64

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

ZeroClaw BB

Best for One person who wants an assistant on their own hardware that answers on Telegram, Discord, Matrix or email, asks before it writes or runs commands, and works with a local model.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 74 against 67
  • Schema & documentation, 82 against 74
  • Security & auth, 76 against 66
  • Maintenance & community, 80 against 74

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • No key needed to call it
  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

The docs state that command execution is not audited. [security.audit] records certificate events only, and tool receipts are opt-in and not durable

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runIronClawZeroClawEdge
Reliability16%206774ZeroClaw +7
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27482ZeroClaw +8
Agent ergonomics13%16.26972ZeroClaw +3
Security & auth14%17.56676ZeroClaw +10
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87480ZeroClaw +6
Transparency & trust7%8.87564IronClaw +11
Negative events≤15-2-3
TotalB 66.7/100BB 70.2/100

Facts side by side

FactIronClawZeroClaw
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorNEAR AIZeroClaw Labs
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingFreemiumFree
x402nono
LicenceMIT OR Apache-2.0MIT OR Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-09-292026-09-05
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 stars33k 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.

ZeroClaw

Supervised autonomy is the default, so tools outside a short read-only list wait for the owner's approval, and secrets are encrypted in the config file. The docs state that command execution is not written to an audit log, and the project publishes no privacy policy or terms.

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

ZeroClaw

  1. Keep [risk_profiles.<alias>] level = "supervised". full runs every tool not listed in always_ask, and the YOLO preset removes the sandbox and path rules too
  2. Add sending and account tools such as send_via, google_workspace and http_request to always_ask so a session-level Always grant cannot skip the prompt
  3. List senders in [peer_groups.<name>] external_peers. ["*"] accepts anyone on that channel
  4. Set [web_fetch].allowed_domains and [http_request].allowed_domains. Fetches run unprompted and the OS sandbox does not block egress
  5. Run one-shot tasks with zeroclaw agent -a <alias> -m "<task>". A cron or webhook turn has no prompt, so shell calls fall to the command policy

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, IronClaw or ZeroClaw?

ZeroClaw scores 70.2 (BB) on agent readiness against IronClaw's 66.7 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. IronClaw leads on transparency & trust.

Are IronClaw and ZeroClaw open source?

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

Other comparisons with IronClaw or ZeroClaw

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