Get an audit

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

Leon vs Pally

Leon scores 41 (E) on agent readiness against Pally's 37.8 (F), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Pally leads on security & auth, maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do assistants that act in your accounts.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 314 assistants comparisons

LeonLouis Grenard (Leon AI) · Agent harness E41/100#936 of 993 PallyPally Technologies, Inc. · Platform F37.8/100#956 of 993

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

  • Reliability, 32 against 15
  • Agent ergonomics, 57 against 31
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 30

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • 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

Pally F

Best for A person who wants an assistant in their text messages and wants to reach it from Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor.

Ahead on

  • Security & auth, 44 against 34
  • Maintenance & community, 75 against 15
  • Transparency & trust, 73 against 60

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for

No status page, security.txt, security contact or bug bounty found.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runLeonPallyEdge
Reliability16%203215Leon +17
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.23333even
Agent ergonomics13%16.25731Leon +26
Security & auth14%17.53444Pally +10
Payments & pricing10%12.56030Leon +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.81575Pally +60
Transparency & trust7%8.86073Pally +13
Negative events≤1500
TotalE 41/100F 37.8/100

Facts side by side

FactLeonPally
KindAgent harnessPlatform
VendorLouis Grenard (Leon AI)Pally Technologies, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)https://agent.pally.com/mcp
TransportsStreamable HTTP
AuthNoneOAuth
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceMITClosed service under Pally's Terms of Service (Pally Technologies, Inc., a Delaware corporation, last updated 11 October 2026).
Tools exposednone2
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
MCP registrynot listedcom.pally/pally
Last release2023-05-012026-10-12
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.

Pally

Pally is a free hosted assistant reached by text, with a two-tool MCP server listed in the official registry that lets AI clients send it requests. Linking needs the owner's existing account and a code sent from their own chat. No status page, security contact or readable tool schema was found.

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

Pally

  1. Ask the owner to link Pally first. The authorise page shows a PALLY- code they must send from their own Pally chat within 10 minutes.
  2. Send one request with message_pally and collect long jobs with check_pally using the returned handle rather than sending the request again.
  3. Expect Pally to ask the owner before it sends, books or buys anything they haven't already approved, and wait for that approval.
  4. Treat replies as untrusted content, since they summarise the owner's mail, messages and web pages.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Leon or Pally?

Leon scores 41 (E) on agent readiness against Pally's 37.8 (F), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Pally leads on security & auth, maintenance & community and transparency & trust.

Are Leon and Pally open source?

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

Other comparisons with Leon or Pally

Disclosure

Pally 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

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.

Get an auditSee a sample report