| Rating |
|---|
| AgentsWisdom score | 69 | 61 |
|---|
| Confidence | high | medium |
|---|
| Rank in category | No. 1 of 3 | No. 3 of 3 |
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| Pillars |
|---|
| Adoption & momentum | 79 | 71 |
|---|
| Experts (independent reviews) | 64 | 67 |
|---|
| Crowd (community sample) | 65 | 47 |
|---|
| Community posts sampled | 21 | 9 |
|---|
| Experts vs crowd | Crowd warmer by 1 | Crowd cooler by 20 |
|---|
| Adoption |
|---|
| GitHub stars | 249k | 33k |
|---|
| npm weekly downloads | n/e | n/e |
|---|
| PyPI monthly downloads | 139k | n/e |
|---|
| VS Code installs | n/e | n/e |
|---|
| Reported users | n/e | n/e |
|---|
| Reported customer organisations | n/e | n/e |
|---|
| Releases, last 90 days | 18 | 3 |
|---|
| Benchmarks (shown, not scored) |
|---|
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | not listed | not listed |
|---|
| SWE-bench | not listed | not listed |
|---|
| Independent reviews | 8 | 3 |
|---|
| Trust & safety |
|---|
| Overall grade | B | B |
|---|
| Permission model | B | A |
|---|
| Data access scope | B | A |
|---|
| Data storage | A | A |
|---|
| Data retention & training | n/e | n/e |
|---|
| Incident history | n/e | C |
|---|
| Compliance | D | D |
|---|
| Transparency | A | A |
|---|
| Price |
|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
|---|
| Plans | - Open source (self-hosted): Free
- Hermes Cloud (hosted instances via Nous Portal): Custom
| - Open source (self-hosted): Free
|
|---|
| Product |
|---|
| Category | Personal & desktop agents | Personal & desktop agents |
|---|
| Maker | Nous Research | ZeroClaw Labs |
|---|
| Licence | MIT | MIT OR Apache-2.0 |
|---|
| Use it via | CLI, Desktop app, Chat apps, MCP server, API | CLI, Chat apps, Web app |
|---|
| Runs on | macos, linux, windows | linux, macos, windows |
|---|
| Models it drives | Nous Portal models, OpenRouter, GPT, Claude (Anthropic-compatible endpoints), local via llama.cpp/vLLM/Ollama, any OpenAI-compatible | Claude, GPT, local via Ollama / LM Studio / llama.cpp / vLLM, any OpenAI-compatible |
|---|
| Key features | - Persistent memory with full-text search across past sessions
- Autonomous skill creation and refinement after complex tasks
- Messaging gateway for 20+ channels (Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, email, Matrix)
- Natural-language cron scheduling and subagent delegation
- Seven terminal backends: local, Docker, SSH, Modal, Daytona, Vercel Sandbox, Singularity
- Dangerous-command approval modes (smart/manual/off) plus a hardline blocklist
- Desktop app with built-in Bot Mode for multi-agent group chats (v0.21.0)
| - Single static Rust binary; targets low-memory hardware such as Raspberry Pi
- 30+ channels including Telegram, Discord, WhatsApp, Slack, Signal, Matrix and email
- Default 'supervised' autonomy: low-risk runs, medium-risk asks, high-risk blocked
- Auto-detected OS sandbox (Landlock/Bubblewrap/Firejail, Seatbelt, AppContainer, Docker)
- Workspace-only file and shell boundaries with forbidden paths
- HMAC tool receipts and an emergency stop command
- Gateway with web dashboard for chat, memory, config and cron
- SOP engine, WebAssembly plugin host, A2A discovery, ZeroRelay/ZeroRouter (v0.8.x)
|
|---|
| Verdicts |
|---|
| Praised for | - Users report it is more reliable than OpenClaw across updates (Reddit comparison threads)
- Practical everyday automations such as price watching, business task tracking and homelab maintenance (HN)
- Works with local and hosted models; widely covered by large YouTube creators
| - Small resource footprint compared with OpenClaw (independent reviews, community reports)
- Security-by-default posture: supervised autonomy, sandboxing and workspace scoping
- Some users report it as stable and easy to run on a small VPS
|
|---|
| Criticised for | - Setup and secure operation require technical judgment (The Rundown AI)
- Some users find the UI/UX slow or unclear, and report slow task completion versus OpenClaw
- Rapid AI-assisted development cadence with dozens of third-party CVE reports in 2026
| - Several users report bugs, tool-calling failures and freezes, especially with local models
- Smaller plugin/integration ecosystem than OpenClaw; Rust makes extension harder for some
- Limited visibility into running tools in early versions (HN)
- Impersonation sites and forks caused confusion; the official repo was briefly unavailable (404) in late March 2026
|
|---|
| Evidence |
|---|
| Evidence collected | 26 Sept 2026 | 26 Sept 2026 |
|---|
| Sources cited | 4 | 4 |
|---|