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

OpenClaw vs Tomo

OpenClaw scores 67.1 (B) on agent readiness against Tomo's 13.1 (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 314 assistants comparisons

OpenClawOpenClaw Foundation · Agent harness B67.1/100#270 of 993 TomoMapo Labs, Inc. · Platform F13.1/100#989 of 993

Which one, for what

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 15
  • Schema & documentation, 84 against 0
  • Agent ergonomics, 77 against 0
  • Security & auth, 74 against 0
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 10
  • Maintenance & community, 86 against 54
  • Transparency & trust, 68 against 47

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

Tomo F

Best for People who want accountability, check-ins and reminders by text, including in group chats.

Also in its favour

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

Watch for

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

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runOpenClawTomoEdge
Reliability16%207515OpenClaw +60
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.2840OpenClaw +84
Agent ergonomics13%16.2770OpenClaw +77
Security & auth14%17.5740OpenClaw +74
Payments & pricing10%12.56010OpenClaw +50
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88654OpenClaw +32
Transparency & trust7%8.86847OpenClaw +21
Negative events≤15-80
TotalB 67.1/100F 13.1/100

Facts side by side

FactOpenClawTomo
KindAgent harnessPlatform
VendorOpenClaw FoundationMapo Labs, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreePaid
x402nono
LicenceMITClosed service under Tomo's Terms of Service (Mapo Labs, Inc., last updated 24 September 2026).
Read-only variant documentedyesno
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-10-122026-09-29
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
Popularity392k starsnone

Verdicts

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.

Tomo

Tomo is a hosted personal AI over iMessage and an iOS app, centred on goals, check-ins and reminders, with regular iOS releases since April 2026. No outside agent can call it, there's no free plan, and no status page, security contact or subprocessor list was found.

Before you call either

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

Tomo

  1. Don't plan to call Tomo from another agent. It answers only the owner's iMessage, group chats it's added to and the iOS app.
  2. Tell the owner that adding Tomo to a group chat applies its terms to every participant.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, OpenClaw or Tomo?

OpenClaw scores 67.1 (B) on agent readiness against Tomo's 13.1 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Are OpenClaw and Tomo open source?

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

Other comparisons with OpenClaw or Tomo

Disclosure

Tomo 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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