Get an audit

Head to head · Assistant proactive · October 2026 research run

NanoClaw vs OpenClaw

NanoClaw scores 68.3 (B) on agent readiness against OpenClaw's 67.1 (B), and leads in 1 of 7 scored categories. OpenClaw leads on agent ergonomics and maintenance & community. Both do assistant proactive.

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

NanoClawNanoCo, Inc. · Agent harness B68.3/100#229 of 986 OpenClawOpenClaw Foundation · Agent harness B67.1/100#270 of 986

Which one, for what

NanoClaw B

Best for A technical owner who wants an assistant on their own machine, reachable from chat apps, with container isolation and scheduled tasks, and who is willing to keep a fork.

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

The Claude provider runs with permissionMode: 'bypassPermissions', so shell, file and web tools run inside the container with no prompt

OpenClaw B

Best for A technical owner who wants an assistant on their own machine across many chat apps, with their choice of model and files they can read and delete.

Ahead on

  • Agent ergonomics, 77 against 70
  • Maintenance & community, 86 against 78

Watch for

Without configuration the default is full access. Host exec runs with no approval and sandboxing is off

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runNanoClawOpenClawEdge
Reliability16%207875NanoClaw +3
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28284OpenClaw +2
Agent ergonomics13%16.27077OpenClaw +7
Security & auth14%17.57474even
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87886OpenClaw +8
Transparency & trust7%8.86568OpenClaw +3
Negative events≤15-5-8
TotalB 68.3/100B 67.1/100

Facts side by side

FactNanoClawOpenClaw
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorNanoCo, Inc.OpenClaw Foundation
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneOAuth or key
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITMIT
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-092026-10-12
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno 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
Popularity31k stars392k stars

Verdicts

NanoClaw

Each session runs in an unprivileged Docker container and API keys stay in a credential gateway on the host, so a manipulated agent cannot read them. Inside the container the agent runs with permission prompts off, network egress is open by default, and it can message any chat it is wired to without approval.

OpenClaw

Self-hosted under the MIT licence, with state, memory and credentials kept on the owner's machine and no paid tier. A fresh install runs tools on the host with full access, no approval prompt and no sandbox, and the project has published 722 security advisories since January 2026, 14 of them critical.

Before you call either

NanoClaw

  1. Install with git clone and bash nanoclaw.sh. There is no registry package, and setup needs Docker, Node 22 or later and a Claude or Codex credential
  2. Set NANOCLAW_EGRESS_LOCKDOWN=true before giving an agent credentials or an audience of strangers. The default leaves egress open
  3. Put chats with different audiences in separate agent groups. Every session of a group shares one read-write workspace and memory tree
  4. Turn on per-request approval for a secret in the gateway when its use should wait for a person. It is off unless configured
  5. On OneCLI installs, move the gateway to 1.42.0 by the upgrade guide before updating to 2026.10.0. The updater stops until that is done

OpenClaw

  1. Set a session permission mode of guarded or workspace, or tools.exec.mode, before connecting mail. The default runs host commands without approval
  2. Turn on agents.defaults.sandbox for any agent that reads mail, web pages or attachments. Sandboxing is off by default
  3. Set tools.message.crossContext.allowAcrossProviders and allowWithinProvider to false to confine sends to the current conversation
  4. Route incoming mail to a restricted reader agent, as the IMAP and Gmail guides show, and deny gateway, cron, sessions_spawn and sessions_send for it
  5. Run openclaw security audit after setup, and treat the Gateway token as an owner credential. POST /tools/invoke accepts it with full operator access

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, NanoClaw or OpenClaw?

NanoClaw scores 68.3 (B) on agent readiness against OpenClaw's 67.1 (B), and leads in 1 of 7 scored categories. OpenClaw leads on agent ergonomics and maintenance & community.

Are NanoClaw and OpenClaw open source?

Yes. NanoClaw is open source (MIT). OpenClaw is open source (MIT).

Other comparisons with NanoClaw or OpenClaw

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