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Head to head · Assistant proactive · October 2026 research run

Dots vs OpenClaw

OpenClaw scores 67.1 (B) on agent readiness against Dots's 28.3 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do assistant proactive.

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

DotsOpenAI · Platform F28.3/100#973 of 986 OpenClawOpenClaw Foundation · Agent harness B67.1/100#270 of 986

Which one, for what

Dots F

Best for A ChatGPT Pro or Enterprise user who wants ongoing work tracked across mail, documents, code and Slack with approval before sends.

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where OpenClaw loses 8 points for them

Watch for

Beta. The admin setting is labelled Use dots (Beta), access is rolling out gradually, and Teams access is an invite-only alpha

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

  • Reliability, 75 against 3
  • Schema & documentation, 84 against 41
  • Agent ergonomics, 77 against 22
  • Security & auth, 74 against 58
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 10
  • Maintenance & community, 86 against 38
  • Transparency & trust, 68 against 31

Also in its favour

  • Open source

Watch for

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

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDotsOpenClawEdge
Reliability16%20375OpenClaw +72
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.24184OpenClaw +43
Agent ergonomics13%16.22277OpenClaw +55
Security & auth14%17.55874OpenClaw +16
Payments & pricing10%12.51060OpenClaw +50
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.83886OpenClaw +48
Transparency & trust7%8.83168OpenClaw +37
Negative events≤150-8
TotalF 28.3/100B 67.1/100

Facts side by side

FactDotsOpenClaw
KindPlatformAgent harness
VendorOpenAIOpenClaw Foundation
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingPaidFree
x402nono
LicenceProprietary hosted service. The governing terms were not readMIT
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
Popularitynone392k stars

Verdicts

Dots

Actions that affect accounts or share information pass an automatic review, and custom rules can require approval or a hand-off. Dots is a beta on Pro plans from $100 a month, and no status page, terms, privacy policy or way to delete individual saved notes was found in the pages we could read.

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

Dots

  1. Say what may be sent. Asking a dot to draft replies does not permit sending them, and an action outside a stated scope needs another decision
  2. Stop three things separately. Pause stops the main task only, delegated tasks stop in Activity and recurring tasks in Scheduled, and completed actions are not undone
  3. Connect each thing separately. A messaging channel grants no access to an inbox, an app or a computer
  4. Sign out of websites and disconnect apps yourself when removing access. Revoking dots access or disconnecting an app does not delete information already obtained
  5. Keep the connected computer online with the ChatGPT app open for local work. Only one personal computer can be connected at a time

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, Dots or OpenClaw?

OpenClaw scores 67.1 (B) on agent readiness against Dots's 28.3 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Are Dots and OpenClaw open source?

No open-source release is listed for Dots. OpenClaw is open source (MIT).

Other comparisons with Dots or OpenClaw

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