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Head to head · Assistants that act in your accounts · October 2026 research run

Leon vs Orchid

Leon scores 41 (E) on agent readiness against Orchid's 20.2 (F), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Orchid leads on reliability and maintenance & community. Both do assistants that act in your accounts.

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

LeonLouis Grenard (Leon AI) · Agent harness E41/100#938 of 1010 OrchidZero Email, Inc. · Platform F20.2/100#992 of 1010

Which one, for what

Leon E

Best for A developer who wants a self-hosted assistant with memory, computer use and a local model, and who will read the source.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 33 against 10
  • Agent ergonomics, 57 against 0
  • Security & auth, 34 against 0
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 10

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Free to start without a card
  • Open source

Watch for

No tagged release of the core since 1.0.0-beta.8 on 1 May 2023. The 2.0 Developer Preview is installed by cloning the develop branch

Orchid F

Best for A founder or operator who wants Gmail and calendar triage by text with approval before anything leaves.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 50 against 32
  • Maintenance & community, 24 against 15

Watch for

No API, MCP server or A2A endpoint for an outside agent.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runLeonOrchidEdge
Reliability16%203250Orchid +18
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.23310Leon +23
Agent ergonomics13%16.2570Leon +57
Security & auth14%17.5340Leon +34
Payments & pricing10%12.56010Leon +50
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.81524Orchid +9
Transparency & trust7%8.86060even
Negative events≤1500
TotalE 41/100F 20.2/100

Facts side by side

FactLeonOrchid
KindAgent harnessPlatform
VendorLouis Grenard (Leon AI)Zero Email, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneOAuth or key
PricingFreePaid
x402nono
LicenceMITClosed service under Orchid's Terms of Service (Zero Email, Inc., last updated 16 January 2026).
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2023-05-01none
Terms last updatedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno 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
Popularity18k starsnone

Verdicts

Leon

Connected-app credentials are encrypted per profile and the Gmail connection is read-only. The 2.0 Developer Preview has no tagged release, runs tools and a 30-minute proactive pulse with no approval step, listens on every network interface with client authentication off, and sends telemetry by default.

Orchid

Orchid is a paid executive assistant over iMessage, SMS and Telegram that holds drafts and calendar holds until the owner approves, with a public status page and a named subprocessor list. No outside agent can call it, there's no free tier, and its privacy policy allows training a personal model while its blog says it never trains.

Before you call either

Leon

  1. Clone the develop branch for 2.0. npm install --global @leon-ai/cli and docs.getleon.ai install and describe the legacy 1.0 betas
  2. Set client_interface.auth.enabled: true and a LEON_PROFILE_TOKEN before the machine joins a shared network. The server binds 0.0.0.0
  3. Set telemetry_enabled: false and runtime.pulse_enabled: false in the profile config.yml for an unattended or private run
  4. Use availability.tools.allowed to limit tools. Shell, file writes, computer use and browser control are otherwise available to the agent with no approval prompt
  5. Back up LEON_CONNECTIONS_ENCRYPTION_KEY from the profile .env. Without it the stored connections cannot be read

Orchid

  1. Don't plan to call Orchid from another agent. It answers only the owner's iMessage, SMS and Telegram threads.
  2. Check status.orchid.ai before telling the owner Orchid is down. The 7 August incident moved it to a new number.
  3. Tell the owner that drafts and holds wait for their approval unless they widen it.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Leon or Orchid?

Leon scores 41 (E) on agent readiness against Orchid's 20.2 (F), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Orchid leads on reliability and maintenance & community.

Are Leon and Orchid open source?

Leon is open source (MIT). No open-source release is listed for Orchid.

Other comparisons with Leon or Orchid

Disclosure

Orchid 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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