Muse vs Instinct: Meta's agent or the invite-only rival?

For most people the choice is made for them: Muse is open to anyone in the US, Canada, Japan, Singapore and Mexico, and Instinct is invite-only. If you can get both, pick Instinct if you want an assistant that lives in your texts and handles plans in a group chat; pick Muse if you want an app with a clearer safety design and a published path from free to paid.

The press has framed these two as rivals since Meta launched Muse in September, weeks before Instinct raised $1 billion at a $10 billion valuation (Fortune). Both do the same kind of job: errands, bookings and purchases you’d otherwise do yourself.

How you use them

Instinct has no new interface. You text or call it, and it uses a phone and a computer the way you would to book trains, order groceries or send flowers (Instinct). Invited users reach it over iMessage and WhatsApp (Digit). Its standout feature is group chats: early-access users can add Instinct to a group, and friends without an account can use it there too (TechCrunch).

Muse is an app. You message it like a person in the Muse app on iPhone, Android and Mac, on the web, or in WhatsApp, where access is still in limited testing (WhatsApp). It works on its own cloud computer, connects to email, calendar and Instagram, and keeps working after you close the app (Meta).

On our checklist, each does three of the five things. Instinct acts in your accounts, keeps working in the background and follows up with you on its own (Built In); its chat channels are invite-only, so they don’t count, and we couldn’t confirm that it runs several assistants.

Access and cost

	Muse	Instinct
Sign-up	Open, in five countries	Invite or waitlist only
Free	Yes, up to an unpublished limit; card required	Yes, during the beta
Paid plans	Power $20, Maximum $100 a month	None published
Model	Muse Spark; Muse Wonder on paid plans	Not disclosed

Instinct being free now doesn’t tell you what it will cost later. Its terms already include paid services but no prices. Muse publishes its paid plans, though not the size of the free allowance (Meta help).

Safety

Muse has the more detailed safety design on paper. A separate Sentinel agent approves anything it sends to the internet, it asks before sending email or buying, it keeps an audit trail, and checkout goes through one-time card numbers from Link by Stripe. Early users and press still reported it overstepping permissions, including reading messages it wasn’t meant to (The Guardian).

Instinct’s terms appoint it as your agent to enter agreements and transactions on your behalf, and require binding arbitration with a class action waiver. Early testers reported it sending an email without asking and keeping inbox data after Google access was revoked (Vellum, a competitor summarising tester reports).

Privacy

Both train on your data by default. Muse uses your interactions to train Meta’s models unless you opt out, and Meta says Muse conversations aren’t shared with its ad systems. Instinct can use your materials for training unless you opt out in its settings, and the opt-out only applies going forward; items in its Vault aren’t used (terms).

The verdict

• You can’t get an invite: Muse, or see Instinct alternatives.
• You plan things with friends over text: Instinct, for its group chats.
• You want approvals and an audit trail you can see: Muse.
• You’re outside Muse’s five countries: neither may be open to you; see the best AI assistants.

For background on each, read what Muse is and what Instinct is.