Meta Muse vs Grok Bot vs OpenClaw vs Hermes vs Pi

In beta since August 2026, Grok Bot is xAI's agent product — distinct from the everyday Grok chat, which has no verified booking or purchasing ability. Named bots run on a persistent cloud computer, sign into your actual apps and websites, keep working after you close your laptop, learn routines by watching you, run scheduled jobs, and come back for approvals before sensitive actions like sending, publishing, buying or deleting.

The catch is trust design: every bot on one account shares the same computer, so one bot's access is every bot's access. In October 2026 a user reported a finance bot's data ending up in a company Slack channel through that shared computer — reported, not independently verified, but the design fact behind it is confirmed in xAI's own docs. Price, verified on xAI's pricing page on 26 October: Free and $8 Plus do not include Grok Bot. Premium at $30/month is the entry point for new customers; Super $100 and Ultra $200 also include it. Older articles citing $20 or $300 routes describe legacy plans.

Free, open-source software you install on your own machine — formerly Clawdbot, then Moltbot, renamed OpenClaw in January 2026. Message it from WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, Slack, Signal and more; it runs as a background daemon with cron jobs, browser automation and persistent memory. The software is free; your costs are model usage and your own hardware or VPS.

The catch is you: sandboxing and execution approvals are off by default, so it can run host commands without asking until you harden it. Its security history is the heaviest here — a February 2026 campaign planted hundreds of malicious skills (auditors disagree on the exact count, so we don't quote one number), and October 2026 reporting found tens of thousands of exposed control panels. Only run it if you can harden a server yourself.

Released February 2026 by Nous Research. A self-hosted agent whose differentiator is a self-improving learning loop: it writes reusable skills from experience and builds a deepening model of you across sessions. Messaging gateway across many platforms, browser automation and background computer use, scheduled agents, and your choice of model provider.

Version 0.22 (13 October 2026) made first-run much easier — guided desktop setup on a free trial model, no API key needed to start. Full self-hosting is still technical (VPS, keys, allowlists, upkeep). Its published incident footprint is smaller than OpenClaw's, but the two projects count disclosures differently, so don't read that as a safety score. The same rule applies to both: vet every third-party skill before installing it.

Inflection's companion — warm, supportive conversation on web, iOS and Android, free, zero setup. It talks through decisions, remembers context with an account, and has a natural voice mode.

Be honest about what that means: it does not book, buy, fill forms or run scheduled jobs. Pick it for conversation, not errands. Two caveats: its chats may be used for training unless you opt out in account settings, and it is not a therapist, however empathetic it sounds.

Meta's managed agent, shipping since 8 September 2026 in the US, Canada, Japan and Singapore. Own app, web, Mac app and WhatsApp. Every user gets a dedicated Secure VM; a separate Sentinel layer approves connector access and actions — Meta's stated principle is that nothing sends or spends without your approval. It books, emails, fills forms and shops, including Stripe Link single-use-card checkout where retailers allow it; Amazon blocked it in September, so where Muse may shop is partly decided by retailers, not just by you.

Free tier has an unpublished limit (a payment card is reported as required even on the free tier); Power is $20/month and Maximum $100/month — but allowances are in tokens, not tasks, so you can't tell in advance how many errands a tier covers. Safety notes, stated carefully: a Mac token flaw found in September was patched within about a day; in October 2026 researchers found more than 6,800 share addresses discoverable through public DNS records, a sample of which contained sensitive material — Meta suspended sharing on 20 October. Don't share chats containing anything sensitive.