AI assistants you can text, compared

A category has formed: assistants that work inside the messaging apps you already use rather than behind their own icon. Below are the four worth knowing in 2026, what each is genuinely good at, and who should pick which.

Poke — the established one

Poke works over iMessage, WhatsApp, SMS, and Telegram. Connect Gmail or Outlook and a calendar, and it drafts replies, reschedules meetings, flags what needs attention, and texts you first. It became the first AI agent approved for Apple's Messages for Business platform, passed 100 million messages in three months, and its parent company was acquired by Cognition in July 2026. Pricing is negotiated at signup; users report roughly $10–30 per month.

Best for: email and calendar triage, and anyone who needs WhatsApp or SMS today.

Manus — the autonomous researcher

Manus is a cloud-based autonomous agent aimed at multi-step research and execution — apartment hunting, trip booking, building a small site. It launched on Telegram in February 2026 with WhatsApp, LINE, and Slack signposted to follow, though Telegram has been the channel that actually works in practice. Pricing is credit-based, starting free with a daily credit allowance; complex research tasks consume credits quickly.

Best for: long, heavy research jobs where you want depth over conversational back-and-forth — provided you watch the credit burn.

OpenClaw — the one you host yourself

OpenClaw is a free, open-source agent runtime and message router you run on your own machine or server. It connects a couple of dozen messaging channels to an AI agent that can run shell commands, drive browsers, and manage local files, with a large community plugin ecosystem. Governance moved to a technical steering committee in early 2026 after its founder left for OpenAI, and it continues to ship.

Best for: technical users who want maximum channel coverage and full control of their data, and who accept the credential-security tradeoffs of self-hosting.

Cael — the errand-runner

Cael runs in iMessage and Telegram, with WhatsApp in progress. It is built around finishing tasks on the open web: a private per-user browser works through booking flows and forms, monitors keep watching prices and restocks for as long as you want, and memory is a thing you can open, correct, and delete. It connects Gmail, calendar, Notion, GitHub, and anything speaking MCP. Pricing is $20 per month for Field Agent and $100 per month for MAX, after a 7-day trial that requires a card.

Best for: people whose backlog is errands on websites rather than messages in an inbox. It is also the youngest product here, which cuts both ways.

Quick comparison

How to choose

1. Start with the channel. If you live in WhatsApp, that narrows things immediately to Poke or a self-hosted OpenClaw.
2. Then the work. Inbox and meetings point to Poke. Deep research points to Manus. Errands on websites point to Cael. Everything, on your own hardware, points to OpenClaw.
3. Then the pricing shape. Fixed monthly is predictable. Credits reward light use and punish heavy use. Self-hosting trades money for time.
4. Then trial it. Every hosted option here has a cheap way in. A week of real use tells you more than any table.

One last note: this category is a year old and moving fast. Anything you read about it, including this page, is a snapshot rather than a settled verdict.