Get an audit

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

Orchid vs ZeroClaw

ZeroClaw scores 70.2 (BB) on agent readiness against Orchid's 20.2 (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

OrchidZero Email, Inc. · Platform F20.2/100#992 of 1010 ZeroClawZeroClaw Labs · Agent harness BB70.2/100#161 of 1010

Which one, for what

Orchid F

Best for A founder or operator who wants Gmail and calendar triage by text with approval before anything leaves.

Also in its favour

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

Watch for

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

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 50
  • Schema & documentation, 82 against 10
  • Agent ergonomics, 72 against 0
  • Security & auth, 76 against 0
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 10
  • Maintenance & community, 80 against 24

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 runOrchidZeroClawEdge
Reliability16%205074ZeroClaw +24
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.21082ZeroClaw +72
Agent ergonomics13%16.2072ZeroClaw +72
Security & auth14%17.5076ZeroClaw +76
Payments & pricing10%12.51060ZeroClaw +50
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.82480ZeroClaw +56
Transparency & trust7%8.86064ZeroClaw +4
Negative events≤150-3
TotalF 20.2/100BB 70.2/100

Facts side by side

FactOrchidZeroClaw
KindPlatformAgent harness
VendorZero Email, Inc.ZeroClaw Labs
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingPaidFree
x402nono
LicenceClosed service under Orchid's Terms of Service (Zero Email, Inc., last updated 16 January 2026).MIT OR Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtyesyes
Last releasenone2026-09-05
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

Orchid

Orchid is a paid executive assistant over iMessage, SMS and Telegram that holds drafts and calendar holds until the owner approves, with a public status page and a named subprocessor list. No outside agent can call it, there's no free tier, and its privacy policy allows training a personal model while its blog says it never trains.

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

Orchid

  1. Don't plan to call Orchid from another agent. It answers only the owner's iMessage, SMS and Telegram threads.
  2. Check status.orchid.ai before telling the owner Orchid is down. The 7 August incident moved it to a new number.
  3. Tell the owner that drafts and holds wait for their approval unless they widen it.

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, Orchid or ZeroClaw?

ZeroClaw scores 70.2 (BB) on agent readiness against Orchid's 20.2 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Are Orchid and ZeroClaw open source?

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

Other comparisons with Orchid or ZeroClaw

Disclosure

Orchid 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.

Get an auditSee a sample report