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

Orbits vs ZeroClaw

ZeroClaw scores 70.2 (BB) on agent readiness against Orbits's 15.6 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do assistants reached by message.

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

Which one, for what

Orbits F

Best for Families who want one shared assistant for calendars, lists, meals, chores and household email.

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where ZeroClaw loses 3 points for them

Watch for

No public agent API, as llms.txt states.

ZeroClaw BB

Best for One person who wants an assistant on their own hardware that answers on Telegram, Discord, Matrix or email, asks before it writes or runs commands, and works with a local model.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 74 against 15
  • Schema & documentation, 82 against 10
  • Agent ergonomics, 72 against 0
  • Security & auth, 76 against 0
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 20
  • Maintenance & community, 80 against 54
  • Transparency & trust, 64 against 43

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • No key needed to call it
  • Free to start without a card
  • Open source

Watch for

The docs state that command execution is not audited. [security.audit] records certificate events only, and tool receipts are opt-in and not durable

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runOrbitsZeroClawEdge
Reliability16%201574ZeroClaw +59
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.21082ZeroClaw +72
Agent ergonomics13%16.2072ZeroClaw +72
Security & auth14%17.5076ZeroClaw +76
Payments & pricing10%12.52060ZeroClaw +40
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.85480ZeroClaw +26
Transparency & trust7%8.84364ZeroClaw +21
Negative events≤150-3
TotalF 15.6/100BB 70.2/100

Facts side by side

FactOrbitsZeroClaw
KindPlatformAgent harness
VendorNemus AI, Inc.ZeroClaw Labs
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingPaidFree
x402nono
LicenceClosed service under the Orbits Terms of Service (Nemus AI, Inc.).MIT OR Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-132026-09-05
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
Popularitynone33k stars

Verdicts

Orbits

Orbits is a family household app whose assistant, Bit, runs shared calendars, lists and meals, reads household email and places restaurant calls after approval, with iOS releases every week or two. No outside agent can call it, prices appear only as App Store in-app purchases, and no status page, security contact or named subprocessors were found.

ZeroClaw

Supervised autonomy is the default, so tools outside a short read-only list wait for the owner's approval, and secrets are encrypted in the config file. The docs state that command execution is not written to an audit log, and the project publishes no privacy policy or terms.

Before you call either

Orbits

  1. Don't plan to call Orbits from another agent. llms.txt says no public agent API is offered.
  2. Tell the owner the assistant needs an Orbits subscription bought in the app, and that any trial appears only at purchase.

ZeroClaw

  1. Keep [risk_profiles.<alias>] level = "supervised". full runs every tool not listed in always_ask, and the YOLO preset removes the sandbox and path rules too
  2. Add sending and account tools such as send_via, google_workspace and http_request to always_ask so a session-level Always grant cannot skip the prompt
  3. List senders in [peer_groups.<name>] external_peers. ["*"] accepts anyone on that channel
  4. Set [web_fetch].allowed_domains and [http_request].allowed_domains. Fetches run unprompted and the OS sandbox does not block egress
  5. Run one-shot tasks with zeroclaw agent -a <alias> -m "<task>". A cron or webhook turn has no prompt, so shell calls fall to the command policy

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Orbits or ZeroClaw?

ZeroClaw scores 70.2 (BB) on agent readiness against Orbits's 15.6 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Are Orbits and ZeroClaw open source?

No open-source release is listed for Orbits. ZeroClaw is open source (MIT OR Apache-2.0).

Other comparisons with Orbits or ZeroClaw

Disclosure

Orbits 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.

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.