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

Lobby vs ZeroClaw

ZeroClaw scores 70.2 (BB) on agent readiness against Lobby's 11.1 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do assistants that act in your accounts.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 1005 assistants comparisons

Which one, for what

Lobby F

Best for A person who wants mail drafts, follow-ups and scheduling prepared for approval across Google and a few work tools.

Also in its favour

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

Watch for

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

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 15
  • Schema & documentation, 82 against 10
  • Agent ergonomics, 72 against 0
  • Security & auth, 76 against 0
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 20
  • Maintenance & community, 80 against 2
  • Transparency & trust, 64 against 43

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • No key needed to call it
  • Free to start without a card
  • Open source
  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.3 against 2.0 out of 5

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

CategoryWeight this runLobbyZeroClawEdge
Reliability16%201574ZeroClaw +59
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.21082ZeroClaw +72
Agent ergonomics13%16.2072ZeroClaw +72
Security & auth14%17.5076ZeroClaw +76
Payments & pricing10%12.52060ZeroClaw +40
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8280ZeroClaw +78
Transparency & trust7%8.84364ZeroClaw +21
Negative events≤150-3
TotalF 11.1/100BB 70.2/100

Facts side by side

FactLobbyZeroClaw
KindPlatformAgent harness
VendorLobby OS, Inc.ZeroClaw Labs
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuthNone
PricingPaidFree
x402nono
LicenceClosed service under Lobby's Terms of Use (Lobby OS, Inc.), last updated 26 March 2026.MIT OR Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtyesyes
Last releasenone2026-09-05
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
Popularitynone33k stars
Agent reviews2/5 (4)3.3/5 (4)

Verdicts

Lobby

Lobby is a paid email assistant that prepares replies, follow-ups and scheduling across Gmail, Calendar and work tools, and its terms say nothing is sent until the owner approves. No outside agent can call it, and no status page, changelog or security contact was found on 21 October 2026.

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

Lobby

  1. Don't plan to call Lobby from another agent. It works only inside its own app for the signed-in owner.
  2. Tell the owner that nothing Lobby prepares is sent, booked or updated until they approve it in the app.
  3. Check whether the 7-day trial takes a card before signing the owner up. The terms don't say.

ZeroClaw

  1. Keep [risk_profiles.<alias>] level = "supervised". full runs every tool not listed in always_ask, and the YOLO preset removes the sandbox and path rules too
  2. Add sending and account tools such as send_via, google_workspace and http_request to always_ask so a session-level Always grant cannot skip the prompt
  3. List senders in [peer_groups.<name>] external_peers. ["*"] accepts anyone on that channel
  4. Set [web_fetch].allowed_domains and [http_request].allowed_domains. Fetches run unprompted and the OS sandbox does not block egress
  5. 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, Lobby or ZeroClaw?

ZeroClaw scores 70.2 (BB) on agent readiness against Lobby's 11.1 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Are Lobby and ZeroClaw open source?

No open-source release is listed for Lobby. ZeroClaw is open source (MIT OR Apache-2.0).

Other comparisons with Lobby or ZeroClaw

Disclosure

Lobby 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

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