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

Pally vs ZeroClaw

ZeroClaw scores 70.2 (BB) on agent readiness against Pally's 37.8 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Pally leads on transparency & trust. Both do assistants that act in your accounts.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 314 assistants comparisons

PallyPally Technologies, Inc. · Platform F37.8/100#956 of 993 ZeroClawZeroClaw Labs · Agent harness BB70.2/100#161 of 993

Which one, for what

Pally F

Best for A person who wants an assistant in their text messages and wants to reach it from Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor.

Ahead on

  • Transparency & trust, 73 against 64

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
  • No incidents deducted, where ZeroClaw loses 3 points for them

Watch for

No status page, security.txt, security contact or bug bounty found.

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 33
  • Agent ergonomics, 72 against 31
  • Security & auth, 76 against 44
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
  • Maintenance & community, 80 against 75

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • No key needed to call it
  • 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 runPallyZeroClawEdge
Reliability16%201574ZeroClaw +59
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.23382ZeroClaw +49
Agent ergonomics13%16.23172ZeroClaw +41
Security & auth14%17.54476ZeroClaw +32
Payments & pricing10%12.53060ZeroClaw +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87580ZeroClaw +5
Transparency & trust7%8.87364Pally +9
Negative events≤150-3
TotalF 37.8/100BB 70.2/100

Facts side by side

FactPallyZeroClaw
KindPlatformAgent harness
VendorPally Technologies, Inc.ZeroClaw Labs
Hosted endpointhttps://agent.pally.com/mcpno (local only)
TransportsStreamable HTTP
AuthOAuthNone
PricingFreemiumFree
x402nono
LicenceClosed service under Pally's Terms of Service (Pally Technologies, Inc., a Delaware corporation, last updated 11 October 2026).MIT OR Apache-2.0
Tools exposed2none
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registrycom.pally/pallynot listed
Last release2026-10-122026-09-05
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

Pally

Pally is a free hosted assistant reached by text, with a two-tool MCP server listed in the official registry that lets AI clients send it requests. Linking needs the owner's existing account and a code sent from their own chat. No status page, security contact or readable tool schema was 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

Pally

  1. Ask the owner to link Pally first. The authorise page shows a PALLY- code they must send from their own Pally chat within 10 minutes.
  2. Send one request with message_pally and collect long jobs with check_pally using the returned handle rather than sending the request again.
  3. Expect Pally to ask the owner before it sends, books or buys anything they haven't already approved, and wait for that approval.
  4. Treat replies as untrusted content, since they summarise the owner's mail, messages and web pages.

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, Pally or ZeroClaw?

ZeroClaw scores 70.2 (BB) on agent readiness against Pally's 37.8 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Pally leads on transparency & trust.

Are Pally and ZeroClaw open source?

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

Other comparisons with Pally or ZeroClaw

Disclosure

Pally 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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