Head to head · Assistant proactive · October 2026 research run

Dots vs QwenPaw

QwenPaw scores 62.2 (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

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 QwenPaw loses 3 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

QwenPaw B

Best for One person who wants an assistant on Chinese and Western chat apps with scheduled digests, a consumer mailbox and file-based memory, on their own machine and with a model of their choice.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 70 against 3
  • Schema & documentation, 68 against 41
  • Agent ergonomics, 67 against 22
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 10
  • Maintenance & community, 73 against 38
  • Transparency & trust, 56 against 31

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Runs on your own machine
  • Open source

Watch for

Usage data is on by default, qwenpaw init --defaults accepts it without a prompt, and the opt-out variable is absent from the README and docs

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDotsQwenPawEdge
Reliability16%20370QwenPaw +67
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.24168QwenPaw +27
Agent ergonomics13%16.22267QwenPaw +45
Security & auth14%17.55860QwenPaw +2
Payments & pricing10%12.51060QwenPaw +50
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.83873QwenPaw +35
Transparency & trust7%8.83156QwenPaw +25
Negative events≤150-3
TotalF 28.3/100B 62.2/100

Facts side by side

FactDotsQwenPaw
KindPlatformAgent harness
VendorOpenAIAgentScope
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP, stdio
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingPaidFree
x402nono
LicenceProprietary hosted service. The governing terms were not readApache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-10-092026-09-11
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
Popularitynone36k 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.

QwenPaw

Mail tools ask for approval by default, automatic mail handling may not delete permanently, and the security docs list what each sandbox backend fails to enforce. Usage data is sent by default, the default approval level passes every tool call no rule flags, and no privacy policy or security advisory is published.

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

QwenPaw

  1. Set QWENPAW_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=true before qwenpaw init --defaults or qwenpaw app. Both send usage data without asking
  2. Set approval_level to STRICT or SMART in agent.json. The default AUTO runs every tool call no guard rule flags
  3. Set dm_policy and group_policy to allowlist with allow_from on each channel. Both default to open
  4. Set QWENPAW_AUTH_ENABLED=true before binding beyond 127.0.0.1. Requests from localhost skip login even then
  5. Keep mail tools on ask for send_message, delete_message and delete_thread, and turn on Mail Access Control with automatic handling

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Dots or QwenPaw?

QwenPaw scores 62.2 (B) on agent readiness against Dots's 28.3 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Are Dots and QwenPaw open source?

No open-source release is listed for Dots. QwenPaw is open source (Apache-2.0).

Other comparisons with Dots or QwenPaw

Machine-readable

For companies

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