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

nanobot vs Zapia

nanobot scores 62.4 (B) on agent readiness against Zapia's 17.3 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Zapia leads on transparency & trust. Both do assistants reached by message.

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

nanobotHKUDS · Agent harness B62.4/100#446 of 1010 ZapiaBrainlogic AI S.A.S. · Platform F17.3/100#995 of 1010

Which one, for what

nanobot B

Best for A technical owner who wants an assistant on their own machine across many chat apps, with file-based memory and a free choice of model.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 70 against 15
  • Schema & documentation, 77 against 0
  • Agent ergonomics, 74 against 0
  • Security & auth, 63 against 3
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
  • Maintenance & community, 82 against 56

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Open source

Watch for

No per-action approval was found in the docs or source. The agent sends messages, runs shell commands and edits files without asking

Zapia F

Best for Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking users who want an assistant over their mail, calendar, Drive and WhatsApp in an app.

Ahead on

  • Transparency & trust, 59 against 48

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where nanobot loses 6 points for them

Watch for

No API, MCP server or A2A endpoint, and the terms forbid unauthorised automated connections.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runnanobotZapiaEdge
Reliability16%207015nanobot +55
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.2770nanobot +77
Agent ergonomics13%16.2740nanobot +74
Security & auth14%17.5633nanobot +60
Payments & pricing10%12.56030nanobot +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88256nanobot +26
Transparency & trust7%8.84859Zapia +11
Negative events≤15-60
TotalB 62.4/100F 17.3/100

Facts side by side

FactnanobotZapia
KindAgent harnessPlatform
VendorHKUDSBrainlogic AI S.A.S.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneOAuth or key
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceMITClosed service under Zapia's terms and conditions (Brainlogic AI SAS). No date was found on the terms.
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-09-152026-10-12
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
Popularity49k starsnone

Verdicts

nanobot

nanobot runs on the owner's machine under the MIT licence, with no telemetry found in its source and memory kept as files the owner can read and restore. No per-action approval step was found, and the shell sandbox and workspace restriction are off by default. Five security advisories were published between March and September 2026, all with fixes.

Zapia

Zapia is a personal assistant app for iOS, Android and the web with a free plan that isn't a trial, weekly iOS releases and explicit confirmation before anything that writes. No outside agent can call it, and no status page, security contact or hosting location was found.

Before you call either

nanobot

  1. Set tools.restrictToWorkspace to true and tools.exec.sandbox to bwrap or seatbelt before giving it real accounts. Both are off by default
  2. Run 0.3.0 or later. Earlier versions carry the published SSRF flaw in web fetch (GHSA-vc5v-6vwm-wf9m)
  3. Keep allowFrom narrow on every channel and never set ["*"] on Email, which has no pairing
  4. Write secrets as ${VAR} references in ~/.nanobot/config.json. Plain values are stored in clear text
  5. Use nanobot -m "..." for a one-shot run, and keep nanobot gateway running for channels, schedules and heartbeat

Zapia

  1. Don't plan to call Zapia from another agent. It answers only in its own app and on the web, and the terms forbid unauthorised automated access.
  2. Tell the owner that Pro and Ultra trials become paid after 7 days unless cancelled in the app store.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, nanobot or Zapia?

nanobot scores 62.4 (B) on agent readiness against Zapia's 17.3 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Zapia leads on transparency & trust.

Are nanobot and Zapia open source?

nanobot is open source (MIT). No open-source release is listed for Zapia.

Other comparisons with nanobot or Zapia

Disclosure

Zapia 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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