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Head to head · Assistant proactive · October 2026 research run

Leon vs Poke

Leon scores 41 (E) on agent readiness against Poke's 37.6 (F), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Poke leads on reliability, schema & documentation and maintenance & community. Both do assistant proactive.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 190 assistants comparisons

LeonLouis Grenard (Leon AI) · Agent harness E41/100#934 of 986 PokeThe Interaction Company of California Inc. · Platform F37.6/100#955 of 986

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

  • Agent ergonomics, 57 against 30
  • Security & auth, 34 against 24
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 30

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

Poke F

Best for One person who wants an assistant in their text messages that reads and drafts mail, manages a calendar and reaches other apps through MCP.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 51 against 32
  • Schema & documentation, 42 against 33
  • Maintenance & community, 31 against 15

Watch for

No documented setting for which actions need approval before Poke sends, deletes or spends. Release notes mention email draft approval only in passing

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runLeonPokeEdge
Reliability16%203251Poke +19
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.23342Poke +9
Agent ergonomics13%16.25730Leon +27
Security & auth14%17.53424Leon +10
Payments & pricing10%12.56030Leon +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.81531Poke +16
Transparency & trust7%8.86058Leon +2
Negative events≤1500
TotalE 41/100F 37.6/100

Facts side by side

FactLeonPoke
KindAgent harnessPlatform
VendorLouis Grenard (Leon AI)The Interaction Company of California Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthNoneAPI key
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceMITProprietary service under Poke's Terms of Service. The poke npm package (CLI and Node.js SDK) declares MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2023-05-012026-06-25
Terms last updatedno document linked2026-03-17
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2026-09-11
Customer content may train modelsyes
Terms restrict automated accessyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingyes
Terms or service can change without noticeyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryes
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.

Poke

Hosted assistant that answers in Apple Messages, WhatsApp, Telegram and RCS and acts in Gmail, Outlook, calendars and MCP servers. Plan prices and a status page are public. No approval settings, credential storage, model providers or retention periods are documented, and customer content trains models unless Maximum Privacy is selected.

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

Poke

  1. POST JSON to https://poke.com/api/v1/inbound/api-message with a Bearer key from Kitchen. Legacy pk_ keys work only on the deprecated /api/v1/inbound-sms/webhook
  2. Expect only {"success": true} back. Poke's answer goes to the owner's message thread, not to the caller
  3. Do not retry a POST blindly. No idempotency key is documented, and a repeated message may make Poke act twice
  4. Treat an API key as full access to the owner's mail, calendar and integrations. Create one key per automation and revoke it when done
  5. Avoid the prefilled integration link with apiKey in the query string for real secrets. Enter the key in the form or use npx poke@latest mcp add -k

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Leon or Poke?

Leon scores 41 (E) on agent readiness against Poke's 37.6 (F), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Poke leads on reliability, schema & documentation and maintenance & community.

Are Leon and Poke open source?

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

Other comparisons with Leon or Poke

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