Get an audit

Head to head · Assistants reached by message · October 2026 research run

Lindy vs Orchid

Lindy scores 32.3 (F) on agent readiness against Orchid's 20.2 (F), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Orchid leads on reliability, maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do assistants reached by message.

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

LindyCrivello Corp (doing business as Lindy) · Platform F32.3/100#974 of 1010 OrchidZero Email, Inc. · Platform F20.2/100#992 of 1010

Which one, for what

Lindy F

Best for Lindy suits a person or small team that lives in Slack and Google or Microsoft mail and wants briefs, drafts, scheduling and meeting notes done on a schedule.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 32 against 10
  • Agent ergonomics, 43 against 0
  • Security & auth, 49 against 0
  • Payments & pricing, 35 against 10

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

The integrations page says approval settings apply in shared Slack threads only. Web chat, Slack direct messages, iMessage and SMS are not covered, and reads are never covered.

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 24
  • Maintenance & community, 24 against 9
  • Transparency & trust, 60 against 52

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where Lindy loses 3 points for them

Watch for

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

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runLindyOrchidEdge
Reliability16%202450Orchid +26
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.23210Lindy +22
Agent ergonomics13%16.2430Lindy +43
Security & auth14%17.5490Lindy +49
Payments & pricing10%12.53510Lindy +25
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8924Orchid +15
Transparency & trust7%8.85260Orchid +8
Negative events≤15-30
TotalF 32.3/100F 20.2/100

Facts side by side

FactLindyOrchid
KindPlatformPlatform
VendorCrivello Corp (doing business as Lindy)Zero Email, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuthOAuth or key
PricingPaidPaid
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under Lindy's Terms of Service. No source is publishedClosed service under Orchid's Terms of Service (Zero Email, Inc., last updated 16 January 2026).
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2025-10-21none
Terms last updated2026-09-24
Privacy policy last updated2026-09-28
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingyes
Terms or service can change without noticeyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryes

Verdicts

Lindy

Lindy keeps what it remembers in files the owner can read and edit, and publishes credit prices. Its approval setting applies in shared Slack threads only, so writes asked for by direct message, text or web chat run unasked, which its pricing page does not say. It has no status page, and its changelog stops in October 2025.

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

Lindy

  1. Treat a request sent by direct message, text or web chat as unguarded. Approval prompts appear in shared Slack threads only.
  2. Run a routine as a dry run before turning it on. A dry run reads real data and sends, posts and writes nothing.
  3. Turn off unused tools after adding an MCP server. Every supported tool arrives switched on, and a large server adds more than a hundred.
  4. Expect a billed seat for anyone who mentions Lindy in Slack. A teammate who joins that way has seven free days first.
  5. Connect only hosted MCP servers on public HTTPS with streamable HTTP, the one kind the docs describe.

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, Lindy or Orchid?

Lindy scores 32.3 (F) on agent readiness against Orchid's 20.2 (F), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Orchid leads on reliability, maintenance & community and transparency & trust.

Other comparisons with Lindy 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.

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