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
| Category | Weight this run | IronClaw | ZeroClaw | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 67 | 74 | ZeroClaw +7 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 74 | 82 | ZeroClaw +8 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 69 | 72 | ZeroClaw +3 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 66 | 76 | ZeroClaw +10 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 60 | 60 | even |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 74 | 80 | ZeroClaw +6 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 75 | 64 | IronClaw +11 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -2 | -3 | |
| Total | B 66.7/100 | BB 70.2/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | IronClaw | ZeroClaw |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | NEAR AI | ZeroClaw Labs |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP | |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT OR Apache-2.0 | MIT OR Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 | 2026-09-05 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | no 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 | ||
| Popularity | 13k stars | 33k 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
- 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
ZeroClaw
- Keep
[risk_profiles.<alias>] level = "supervised".fullruns every tool not listed inalways_ask, and the YOLO preset removes the sandbox and path rules too - Add sending and account tools such as
send_via,google_workspaceandhttp_requesttoalways_askso a session-level Always grant cannot skip the prompt - List senders in
[peer_groups.<name>] external_peers.["*"]accepts anyone on that channel - Set
[web_fetch].allowed_domainsand[http_request].allowed_domains. Fetches run unprompted and the OS sandbox does not block egress - 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).
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- OpenClaw vs ZeroClaw
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Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/ironclaw-vs-zeroclaw.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/ironclaw.json·/api/v1/tools/zeroclaw.json - From a terminal
anchor compare ironclaw zeroclaw(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "ironclaw", "b": "zeroclaw"}at/mcp, no key