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Head to head · Proactive personal assistants · October 2026 research run

QwenPaw vs Town

QwenPaw scores 62.2 (B) on agent readiness against Town's 48.7 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Town leads on security & auth and transparency & trust. Both do proactive personal assistants.

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

QwenPawAgentScope · Agent harness B62.2/100#454 of 1010 TownTown.com, Inc. · Platform D48.7/100#834 of 1010

Which one, for what

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 35
  • Schema & documentation, 68 against 33
  • Agent ergonomics, 67 against 49
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
  • Maintenance & community, 73 against 60

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

Town D

Best for An owner who wants a mail and calendar assistant whose routines other systems can trigger.

Ahead on

  • Security & auth, 79 against 60
  • Transparency & trust, 63 against 56

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card
  • No incidents deducted, where QwenPaw loses 3 points for them

Watch for

The privacy policy describes training with an opt-out and the trust page says training is opt-in.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runQwenPawTownEdge
Reliability16%207035QwenPaw +35
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26833QwenPaw +35
Agent ergonomics13%16.26749QwenPaw +18
Security & auth14%17.56079Town +19
Payments & pricing10%12.56030QwenPaw +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87360QwenPaw +13
Transparency & trust7%8.85663Town +7
Negative events≤15-30
TotalB 62.2/100D 48.7/100

Facts side by side

FactQwenPawTown
KindAgent harnessPlatform
VendorAgentScopeTown.com, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP, stdioHTTP
AuthNoneOAuth or key
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Closed service under Town's Terms of Service (Town.com, Inc., updated 21 July 2026).
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-09-112026-10-10
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
Popularity36k starsnone

Verdicts

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.

Town

Town is a hosted assistant that works across the owner's mail, calendar and work apps, and other systems can start its routines through per-routine webhooks with rotatable secrets, idempotency keys and documented errors. A caller can't read a run's result. The privacy policy and trust page disagree on whether training is on by default.

Before you call either

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

Town

  1. Start a Town routine with POST to its webhook URL, Authorization Bearer whsec_ secret, and application/json or text/plain. Expect 202 only.
  2. Send X-Town-Idempotency-Key with a stable event id on every retry so Town doesn't start a second run.
  3. Treat 404 as wrong secret, disabled endpoint or missing endpoint alike, and ask the owner to check Routine Settings rather than retrying.
  4. Send account_email only if the owner allowed the override. It must match a connected account in full and can't widen the routine's scope.
  5. Ask the owner to keep routines that act on webhook input in approval-required mode, as Town's own docs advise.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, QwenPaw or Town?

QwenPaw scores 62.2 (B) on agent readiness against Town's 48.7 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Town leads on security & auth and transparency & trust.

Are QwenPaw and Town open source?

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

Other comparisons with QwenPaw or Town

Disclosure

Town 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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