How to Choose an AI Personal Assistant (Including Ones You Just Text)

Where do you want to talk to it?

The best assistant is the one you’ll actually use, so start with the app you already live in. If you text all day, pick one you can text. If your work happens in Slack, pick one that lives there.

Assistants you just text are the easiest to start with. There’s nothing to install: you save a number and send a message. Many personal assistants work over iMessage, SMS, WhatsApp or Telegram.

If WhatsApp is where your life happens, these work there:

What should it actually do?

Name the jobs before you compare features. Assistants tend to be strong at one of three things:

• Inbox and calendar. Reading email, drafting replies, finding a time, moving meetings. Good if your day is mostly messages and meetings.
• Errands in the real world. Calling a business, booking a table, ordering something, filling in a form on a website. This needs an agent that can use a browser or a phone, not just your calendar.
• Family and home. Shared schedules, school emails, meals and reminders for everyone, often inside a family group chat.

Each listing shows what the assistant is best for and its key features, taken from the maker’s own pages. Open a card above to see them.

Does it ask before it acts?

An assistant you can trust shows you what it’s about to do and waits for your yes. This matters most for anything you can’t undo: paying, sending a message in your name, deleting or accepting something.

Before you connect your accounts, check three things on the maker’s site:

1. What needs your approval. Look for clear words about purchases and sending.
2. Where your passwords and cards go. The best answer is that the assistant never sees them at all.
3. What it remembers, and whether you can delete it.

Many listings include a privacy section with exactly these points, linked to the maker’s own privacy page.¹Note 1 We only show privacy points that the maker states on its own site. A listing without a privacy section means we haven’t found one stated there, not that the assistant is unsafe.

What will it cost?

Most assistants let you start free, then charge for more use or more people. A free plan is the best way to test one with your real week before paying.

Some are free outright because they’re open source. You run them yourself and pay only for the AI service they use. Others are paid from day one, usually with a trial. Every listing shows the price from the maker’s own pricing page, and AI agent pricing compares plans side by side.

Who runs it, and could you run it yourself?

Look at who makes it, because you’re handing them your inbox and your calendar. Every listing names the maker. A known company, a clear privacy page and a real way to contact them are all good signs.

If you’d rather keep everything on your own computer, some personal assistants are open source:

These take more setup, but you decide where they run and which AI service they use.

A quick way to decide

Pick two that match your answers to the first two questions, use each for a few days, and keep the one you stopped thinking about. A good assistant disappears into your routine: you text it the way you’d text a person, and things get done.

The difference between a chatbot and an assistant that acts is covered in AI agent vs chatbot.