Personal AI agents compared (2026): Muse, ChatGPT, Gemini Spark, Grok Bot, Instinct and OpenClaw

If you want a personal AI agent today and you do not want to pay for one, install OpenClaw on a machine you already own or use the free tier of ChatGPT; everything else on this page either costs money or is limited to a country, a plan or an invite. If you want one that acts across your calendar and inbox rather than answering inside a chat window, Gemini Spark costs $19.99 per month on a Google AI Pro subscription, and Google is specific about what it requires and where it stops: 18 or over, a personal Google account, a supported country, and a product that "is designed to ask for your review and confirmation before it completes certain actions, such as: Sending communications, modifying your data, making purchases, and submitting web forms". Google's own guidance is to expect to stay involved with it: "Your active supervision is the most important way to protect against risk while using Spark". The six products below are not equivalent, and the differences that matter are price, where the agent runs, who is allowed to sign up, and whether you can teach it anything in writing.

#What do the six agents cost, and who can use them?

Every cell here comes from the vendor's own page, cited at the end. Cells that read "Not published" or "Not documented" are not oversights: they mark facts the company does not publish.

#Which of these will actually cost you money?

Three of the six have a free tier you can check, and a fourth, Grok Bot, has a free trial, covered below. OpenClaw's documentation says it is "MIT licensed, community-driven" with "no paid tier, no telemetry by default beyond a version check you can turn off". That is the software, not the thinking: OpenClaw drives a model provider you configure yourself under Settings and Models, or a local runtime such as Ollama, LM Studio or vLLM, so your bill is whatever that provider charges. ChatGPT lists a Free plan at "$0/month", then "Go" at "$8/month", "Plus" at "$20/month" and Pro "From $100/month".

Meta's announcement says Muse is "free for most of what people need, with subscription plans for people who want to do more", and Meta's help centre puts figures on the plans. Muse "is available for free with a usage limit", and there are two paid plans: Power at $20 per month, with "500M Muse tokens per week", and Maximum at $100 per month, with "3B Muse tokens per week". The same page adds that "Muse and Muse subscriptions are in limited testing and aren't available in all locations yet."

Google is the clearest of the hosted agents about its floor: Spark needs "a Google AI Pro or Ultra subscription", and Google's subscriptions page prices AI Pro at "$19.99/ month" and AI Ultra from "$99.99/ month". Grok Bot has two doors: SpaceXAI says it is available to "SuperGrok, SuperGrok Plus, and SuperGrok Heavy; Cursor Pro, Pro+, and Ultra; and Cursor Teams Standard and Premium subscribers", and Cursor prices Pro at "$20 / mo." Cursor also notes that on Teams plans "Every member has access. No Premium seat or admin request required." Before any of that, Cursor's plans page offers a free trial that "is a usage credit rather than a set number of days, though a 7-day window also applies"; once it runs out, you need one of those Cursor plans or a linked SuperGrok or X Premium+ subscription.

Instinct is the outlier. Its terms provide for paid services, and "all payments are non-refundable", but no price appears on its own pages. TechCrunch reported on 17 September 2026, citing Instinct's founder, that Instinct Concierge is "rolling out in early access to some users, with plans to expand to all users in time". That is a press report about availability, not a price, and we have left the company's funding and valuation numbers out of this page entirely because the reporting on them disagrees with itself.

#Where does each agent actually run?

This is the split that decides how much of your data leaves your machine.

Muse runs in Meta's cloud, but in a per-person box: Meta describes a "Muse Secure VM, a dedicated, virtual machine (VM) that houses both the agent and a person's data", watched by "a separate Sentinel agent". You reach it "in the Muse app or directly in WhatsApp", with AI glasses named as coming later.

Gemini Spark is deliberately narrow about its surfaces. Google says it is "only available in the Gemini mobile app, the Gemini app on Mac, and the Gemini web app at gemini.google.com". ChatGPT is the broadest of the hosted set: skills work "in the ChatGPT desktop app, Codex CLI, and IDE extension", and skills bundled in plugins are "available in Chat and Work across ChatGPT on the web, desktop, and mobile".

Grok Bot takes a different shape again. SpaceXAI says its bots "share a computer of their own in the cloud", one machine for all of them rather than one each, where they "sign into the tools you already use and work across apps, inboxes, and more". Its documentation is explicit: "Bots have separate roles and conversations, but they share the computer." You drive them from the Grok Bot desktop app on macOS, Windows or Linux, or the companion app on iOS or Android; SpaceXAI's FAQ says "The same Bots and conversations sync across your signed-in devices", and lists Windows and Linux builds for x64 and Arm64 and phones on "Android 9 or later". Usage is metered on your Cursor account, and Cursor's plans page says "macOS and iOS share a single usage bucket tied to your signed-in Cursor account."

OpenClaw installs on hardware you own, but it is not the only one of the six that works on your machine. OpenAI's Codex CLI installs on your own computer, where it can "inspect files, make edits, and run the tools already installed on your machine", and its IDE extension page says to "Keep quick iterations local". Google says Gemini Spark can browse "by connecting to your own device (aka your local Chrome browser)", though it "might also use a remote browser" instead. OpenClaw's installer covers "macOS, Linux, or Windows", needs "Node 24.16+ or 26.1+", and installs with one line:

curl -fsSL https://openclaw.ai/install.sh | bash

Phones join as paired nodes for camera, screen and voice work rather than as the place the agent lives. If you want that setup without leaving a laptop open, our guide to running OpenClaw on a Mac mini covers the always-on version, and OpenClaw vs ChatGPT is the longer form of the self-hosted versus hosted argument.

#Can you teach any of them to do your job your way?

Four of the six take written instructions you author. Muse is the one that does not, Instinct does not say either way, and the four that do differ in how you hand the instructions over.

ChatGPT and OpenClaw both use the same shape: a folder whose required file is SKILL.md. OpenClaw says "Each skill lives in a directory containing a SKILL.md file with YAML frontmatter and a markdown body", and reads them from several locations, including a workspace skills folder and a personal ~/.agents/skills. ChatGPT's documentation lists SKILL.md as "Required: instructions + metadata", with optional scripts/, references/ and assets/ folders beside it, and offers a built-in @skill-creator to draft one.

Gemini takes the same file, by upload rather than from a directory on your disk. Google's page lists "Upload a file to create a skill" among its creation routes, telling you to "Select a SKILL.md file or a .zip file that contains a SKILL.md file in the main folder", beside the options to write one with Gemini's help, from a prefilled template or from a blank one. Google defines a skill as "a set of reusable instructions and additional context. It teaches Gemini how to do a specific task and what tools to use", says they "can be used across Gemini Spark tasks", and restricts the feature to personal accounts: "For now, this feature isn't available if you sign in with a work or school Google Account."

Grok Bot takes written skills too. SpaceXAI's documentation defines a skill as "a reusable set of instructions for how to do a task", says "Private skills are one library shared by all your Bots", and tells you that you can "ask the Bot to create a skill from written instructions and the completed task". You can also teach by demonstration: perform the workflow once, then "review the skill the Bot creates", which the documentation calls "a draft". A routine is a separate thing, which "tells one Bot when to run a workflow". SpaceXAI's Grok Bot 101 guide adds that "Grok Bot supports the same MCP servers, plugins, and skills as Cursor."

Muse is the one without user-written skills. Meta's help centre says "Skills are developed by Meta and are already part of Muse", and that where a service is missing, "you can ask Muse to create a Custom Connector". It warns in the same breath that "Meta doesn't review custom connectors or how they use your information, so grant access with caution": the agent writes the integration, and nobody reviews it.

If you are installing skills that somebody else wrote, for any of these products, read them first. OpenClaw's own documentation puts it bluntly: "Treat third-party skills as untrusted code. Read them before enabling." Our skill security audit is the checklist we use, and nothing on ClawDocx is an endorsement of a third-party skill.

#Who is actually allowed to sign up?

Eligibility, not features, is what will stop most readers.

• Gemini Spark: Google requires you to "Be 18 or over" and excludes the European Economic Area, Nigeria, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
• Meta Muse: "rolling out in the US on iOS, Android, and muse.ai", per Meta's announcement of 8 September 2026.
• Instinct: its terms say "You must be 18 years of age or older to use the Services" and cover texts about "waitlist updates" and a welcome "when your spot becomes available", and its site invites you to text it to get started.
• Grok Bot: you can start on a free trial, which Cursor offers on free-plan accounts as well as paid ones. Cursor says "the Grok Bot trial never becomes a paid plan", so to keep going you need a Cursor Pro, Pro+, Ultra or Teams plan, or a linked SuperGrok or X Premium+ subscription. Enterprise users can "join a waitlist for future access".
• ChatGPT and OpenClaw: open to anyone who can create an account or install software.

One thing worth reading before you connect an agent to your accounts: Instinct's terms let it "access and interact with Connected Services on your behalf" and "take Actions on Connected Services on your behalf", including purchases made with a payment method you have authorised. That is the point of the product, and it is also the paragraph to read twice. Our walkthrough of what a personal agent does in daily life is a realistic view of what that permission buys you.

#What could not be pinned down

Two gaps are worth naming, because they are the questions readers ask first.

Meta prices both Muse subscriptions, but its subscriptions page describes the free tier only as coming "with a usage limit" and does not say how large that limit is, so this page does not guess at it. And Google's own pages are not consistent about which plan Spark belongs to: the Gemini help page says Spark needs "a Google AI Pro or Ultra subscription", while the subscriptions page markets it as an Ultra benefit, listing "first access to advanced features like Deep Think and Gemini Spark (in select countries)". This article follows the help page, because it is the page that documents the product's requirements rather than sells the plan, and notes the disagreement here rather than picking the cheaper number quietly.