Poke alternatives: AI assistants you can text

The closest Poke alternative is Lindy: you text it in iMessage or SMS, it messages you first with alerts and daily briefs, and it says it never trains on your data, though it costs $49.99 a month. If you want to keep Poke’s free price and can run software yourself, use OpenClaw or Hermes Agent, which both answer in iMessage, WhatsApp and Telegram and let you pick the model.

Disclosure: Rakazo, ranked fourth, is made by the company that runs this site. It is ranked by the same criteria as the rest.

Why people look for Poke alternatives

Poke made the personal assistant feel like a contact: there is no app, you sign up with your phone number and text it in iMessage, SMS or Telegram. It connects to your email, calendar and many other apps, runs automations called recipes, and messages you first when something needs attention. The free plan needs no card. On our checklist, the one thing it misses is running several bots. People still look elsewhere, for a few reasons:

• Training by default. Poke’s privacy notice says your data may be used to train its models unless you choose Maximum Privacy.
• A new owner. The company behind Poke joined Cognition in July 2026. Cognition says current users can keep using Poke as before, but the product’s direction may change.
• No idea what’s under the hood. Poke doesn’t say which models it uses or how many credits each plan includes, so you can’t predict when you’ll hit a limit.
• Limited channels and numbers. WhatsApp is only available in some markets, and an account takes only one phone number.
• Real-world tasks cost $199. Poke Human, the people who handle reservations and phone calls, is only on the Ultra plan.

How we ranked them

Poke does two things: it keeps an eye on your email, calendar and apps and messages you first, and it lives in your texts. So the first four tools here do the same job (they act in your accounts and reach out on their own), and the last two do adjacent work, projects and routines, for people whose Poke use grew in that direction. Within each group, tools you can text over iMessage, WhatsApp or Telegram without running your own server come first, then tools you can text once you self-host. Ties go to the one that reaches more chat apps, then to the lower price. Our overall rating is in the table above.

1. Lindy: the closest hosted texting assistant

Lindy is the only hosted tool here you can text over iMessage or SMS without setting anything up, and it behaves like Poke: a personalized first message, alerts on time-sensitive email and daily briefs. It goes further on work, with email triage and drafted replies in your voice, scheduling, meeting recordings and prep, its own phone number you can call, and 1,500+ integrations plus MCP servers. It asks before anything with outside impact. Lindy says it never uses your data to train models, and you choose the model per task, two of the main reasons people leave Poke.

What you give up: price and the personal side. Paid seats start at $49.99 per user a month, the free credits expire after 7 days, and Lindy is built for small teams and work, not personal errands. There is no mobile app, though with texting you don’t need one.

2. OpenClaw: free, and in every chat app

OpenClaw answers in 29 chat channels, including iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack and Discord, so you can text it from wherever you already are. It is free and MIT licensed, runs on your own computer, and works with 64 model and media providers or local models, so you always know what model you’re using. OpenClaw itself trains no models.

What you give up: ease and safety by default. You run it yourself, setup expects the command line, and sandboxing is off by default. The software is free but the model isn’t, and expensive models have produced $100-a-day bills.

3. Hermes Agent: free, and learns your routines

Hermes Agent, from Nous Research, also lives in your chat apps: one gateway connects it to more than 20 platforms, including Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, SMS, email and iMessage. It writes reusable skills after complex tasks, keeps a memory and a profile of you, and checks in on its own. It is MIT licensed and model-agnostic, and you can run several agents with different jobs.

It ranks below OpenClaw because it reaches fewer chat apps, and its iMessage support needs a separate BlueBubbles server on a Mac, an extra step for Poke users who mostly text from an iPhone. An optional $20 Nous Portal plan bundles models and one hosted cloud agent if you’d rather not pick a provider.

What you give up: the “nothing to install” part. Setup expects the command line and your own machine, and there is no native mobile app.

4. Rakazo: several bots, your model, texting when self-hosted

Rakazo runs persistent bots, each with a job, memory, routines and its own sandboxed computer with a browser and terminal. You choose the model per bot, including an existing Claude or ChatGPT subscription or local models, and you decide which actions need your approval. Self-hosting is free and adds Telegram, WhatsApp and iMessage.

It ranks below OpenClaw and Hermes Agent because it reaches fewer chat apps: the hosted plan, from $15 a month, covers Slack and Rakazo’s own apps, and texting only works when you self-host.

What you give up: simplicity. Rakazo is in beta, it is more setup than texting a number, and on hosted plans you pay your model provider separately unless you buy Rakazo credits.

5. Manus: free plan, reachable in Telegram

Manus is a different kind of assistant: you give it a task and it plans and finishes it in its own environment, returning a report, website, slide deck or video. You can message it in Telegram and Slack, and Automations start from events in Gmail, Slack or Notion. There is a free plan.

What you give up: the ambient assistant. Manus is built for projects, not daily nudges about your inbox and calendar, and credits are charged by task complexity, so costs are as hard to predict as Poke’s.

6. Grok Bot: most capable, for work

Grok Bot runs named Bots on a persistent cloud computer that sign in to your apps, run routines on a schedule or trigger, and can phone US businesses for you, the kind of task Poke reserves for its $199 plan.

What you give up: the texting. Its chat-app channel is Slack, so day to day you use its desktop and mobile apps. It starts at $30 a month with no free plan, you can’t choose the model, and users ran out of weekly usage early over Halloween weekend.

Which one should you pick?

• You want Poke’s texting with no training on your data, for work: Lindy.
• You want free, in every chat app, and can run it yourself: OpenClaw.
• You want free and an agent that learns your routines: Hermes Agent.
• You want several bots with your own model and a sandbox each: Rakazo.
• Your requests are really projects: Manus.
• You want phone calls and routines without paying $199: Grok Bot.

If you stay on Poke, switch to Maximum Privacy before connecting your email if you don’t want your data used for training.