Claude Duet vs OpenClaw: Anthropic's agent, or one of your own?

The same idea, built two ways

Claude Duet, opened as a research preview on October 21, 2026, is a separate app from the main Claude app: it briefs you each morning, checks your connected accounts every few hours, and takes on tasks you give it in a message, on a machine Anthropic runs. OpenClaw is the open-source version of the same ambition, MIT-licensed, with its memory in plain files and a home on a computer you control. One arrives working inside the Claude account you already have, once your invitation comes; the other arrives as software plus a few decisions about where it lives and which model it uses.

The computer underneath

Anthropic says Duet works on a cloud computer of its own, with its browser on a separate dedicated machine, both kept apart from the model, and publishes nothing else about them: not its size, its operating system, where it is, or a way for you to reach it. You can’t watch its browser or take it over, and it can’t see your local files. Its history, memory and tasks stay until you delete or reset them, and deleting your Claude account removes them. OpenClaw’s computer is whichever you give it, a laptop, a Mac mini or a server, so you know what it is and can open it, back it up or move it; the boundaries around it are yours to draw, which means drawing them well is your job too.

Models and the meter

Duet runs on Claude Opus 5.5 with no picker, and it decides how much effort a job needs. It costs nothing on top of Pro or Max during the preview, but it shares their five-hour and weekly usage limits at the same rate as chat, and its background checks and morning brief count against them; a big job, a financial model or a deck, takes more. Anthropic publishes no figure for how much Duet work a plan buys. OpenClaw takes any model with an API, and you can change it per task, run a cheap model for routine jobs, or use a ChatGPT subscription you already pay for. The software costs nothing; what it costs to run is the machine plus the model, both itemized.

Where you talk to it

Duet lives in its own app on iPhone and Android and on the web at claude.ai, in one ongoing thread you type or speak into, with channels for separate topics; it doesn’t make calls or send texts. OpenClaw lives in the messengers you already open every day: WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, Slack, Signal and more, so the agent is a contact in your messages rather than a place you go to, and it can message you first when something needs you.

What each can reach

Duet’s advantage is breadth on day one. It uses the Claude Marketplace’s connectors and plugins (Gmail, Google Calendar and Drive, Slack, HubSpot, QuickBooks, Stripe, Docusign, Shopify and thousands more), its own cloud browser for sites without one, and it can buy things, with your approval each time, through Stripe’s Link or Shopify’s Shop Pay. Microsoft 365 isn’t connected yet. OpenClaw reaches what you connect: Gmail and calendars through their own access, any MCP server, a browser on its machine, the files and command line of the computer it runs on, and skills you write or install. More setup, and nothing deciding what it is allowed to connect to.

Safety and what the company keeps

Both face the same unsolved problem: prompt injection, where a web page or an email carries instructions meant for the agent. Duet answers it in layers: approval before it sends, pays, signs or deletes; a check outside the working model on whether each action matches what you asked; a classifier that stops card numbers, ID numbers and sign-in details leaving in a message; passwords the model never sees; and actions it refuses even with your approval, such as moving money between accounts. Anthropic’s safety page still says the safeguards “will occasionally miss something.” OpenClaw answers with what you configure: who may message it, which commands need your approval, what the machine holds.

On data, Duet keeps your history and memory with Anthropic until you delete them, and its pages don’t say how long it keeps them otherwise or whether Duet’s conversations train models. With OpenClaw, your conversations and memory stay on its computer, and what reaches a model is governed by the provider you picked and its terms, which you can change.

Who can have it

Duet needs a Claude Pro or Max plan on a US account and an invitation from the waitlist, which goes out in waves; Free accounts don’t get it, and Team and Enterprise plans come later. OpenClaw is software: anyone can run it anywhere, under any account, for themselves or for a business, subject only to the model provider’s terms.

The choice

If you already pay for Claude, live in Gmail, Slack and the business apps it connects to, and want an assistant that works the day your invitation arrives, Duet is the least-effort version of this idea, with approvals and refusals built in rather than configured. Choose OpenClaw when the agent is meant to be yours: your model, your chat apps, your files on a machine you can name, in any country, available today. The running of that machine is the part you can hand off: hosted OpenClaw puts it on a server someone else keeps. Everpod’s version puts your agent on its own private cloud computer, set up for you with no technical knowledge needed; your pod arrives secured, backed up, and private to you. $29 a month, cancel anytime. Your plan covers up to $10 of model usage a month.