The competitive market · September 2026
Four agents. Three shapes. One question.
The personal-agent market has consolidated into a handful of real products. Here they all are, in one view — what each one is, whose machine it runs on, who can read the record it keeps, and who can switch it off. That last question is the one that decides the whole field.
Every fact about a competitor on this page is taken from that vendor's own material, read on 10 September 2026, re-verified 22 September 2026 and 29 September 2026, and held in our sourced dossiers. Where we quote them, we quote them exactly. Where a figure is press-reported rather than vendor-stated, it is labelled as reported.
The category map
Who is in the field, and who holds the keys to each one's record
Four competing agents, three shapes. Two run in a vendor's cloud, where the vendor holds the keys and can switch them off. Two run on your own machine, where you hold the keys — and you alone carry the whole burden of keeping it safe and working. Centurion runs on your machine too, and you still hold the keys — but with a vendor who warrants the software and answers for it.
Also in the market, but not a competing agent: ClawBox, a €749 hardware appliance that ships OpenClaw or Hermes pre-installed. It authors no agent of its own, so it sits outside the carried set — it is packaging for two of the agents above, not a fourth opinion on your life.
The custody question
Who can read it, and who can switch it off?
Every product in this field keeps a record of your life, and every one of them holds that record behind a key. The only question that matters is whose key it is — and whether anyone answers when the thing breaks. On the four carried products the answers split cleanly: Two keep your record on a machine you cannot touch, Two hand you the keys and then leave you to carry everything yourself, and one hands you the keys and stays.
Their cloud. Their keys. Their switch.
A cloud agent keeps the record of your life on a computer in somebody's data centre, behind a key the vendor holds. Stop paying, fail a review, or watch the product get sunset — and the agent, the memory and the history are switched off, and you keep nothing you can point at.
Their roadmap is your lifespan
A hosted agent lives exactly as long as its product does. Products get discontinued, acquired, repriced or quietly sunset. When the line moves, every memory, integration and learned routine goes with it. A machine you hold has no such expiry date.
“Your data stays private” is a policy. On your own machine it is a fact.
Every hosted agent's sovereignty promise is a sentence in a terms document, and terms documents get revised. On hardware you hold, nobody has to promise anything: the record is on your disk, in your building, and no future update can revoke physics.
Credentials sit wherever the agent sits
To act as you — answer your email, move your calendar, check you in for a flight — an agent has to be trusted with your logins. The moment you hand them over, they live with the agent. On your machine they never leave the building.
Holding the keys yourself is the easy half
The open-source agents hand you the keys and that is a genuine gift — but you also inherit the whole job that a vendor normally does: patching, backups, credential rotation, security posture, and a fix for whatever breaks at 11pm. Custody without a warrantor is a second job.
The keys and the warranty, together
Centurion runs on your machine, the record never leaves it, and inference stays in the building. You hold the keys — and there is still a named vendor on the line who warrants the software and answers for it. That combination is the whole difference.
Fair to the field, and to us
One appliance in this market does ship hardware — ClawBox, at €749, with an NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano Super inside. It is a genuine machine that arrives ready and belongs to you, and it earns the point. But read what it runs: OpenClaw or Hermes Agent, open source, somebody else's product, advertised as swappable “in one click”. You own the box; the intelligence inside it belongs to a project you do not control and nobody warrants. Owning the machine is only half the question — the other half is who answers for what runs in it.
Centurion runs on your machine — you supply it, you hold the keys, and the record never leaves it. Brain €50/mo · Core €150/mo, billed monthly · cancel anytime. The being, the memory and the record live on your hardware, and the people who built it answer for it.
“Who can read it, and who can switch it off — the answer settles every other question.
The pattern across the field
Three ways to hold the keys — only one of them comes with a warrantor
Strip the four products down to their structure and the market offers three answers to the custody question.
Their cloud
The intelligence lives on the vendor's machine. They hold the keys to your record, and they can switch it off. The convenience is real; the custody is theirs.
Your machine, alone
The intelligence lives on your machine and you hold the keys — and you become the integrator, the sysadmin, the security team and the support contract. Custody is yours; so is the entire burden.
Your machine, warranted
The intelligence lives on your machine and you hold the keys — with a vendor who warrants the software, keeps it working, and answers for it. Custody, plus accountability.
“Who holds the keys is the question. Who answers for them is the difference.
The Centurion position
One structural difference, under five different names
Read the four dossiers and the same question appears, wearing a different name each time. Against Muse it is “whose machine is it, really?” Against Hermes it is “an engine is not a being — and a download is not a delivery.” Against OpenClaw it is “supported is not verified.” Against Grok Bot it is “their computer, your logins.” Against ClawBox it is “you own the box — who owns what runs in it?” They are all the same question: who can read it, and who can switch it off?
- Your keys. The record, the memory and the skills live on your machine. Only you can read them; only you can switch them off.
- Your machine. Centurion runs on hardware you hold, and inference never leaves the building.
- A warrantor. A named person meets every owner and stays on the line. One to two senior seats per organisation, on purpose.
- Accountable. If it breaks, someone answers. You are not the integrator, the sysadmin or the security team.
Read the full comparisons
Each one, argued like-for-like
Two personal agents that both promise a computer of their own. Muse's lives in Meta's cloud, behind a key Meta holds. Centurion's sits on your desk, behind a key you hold.
This is the closest thing in the field to our own engine, and it is free, MIT-licensed and genuinely excellent. It puts you in charge of your own machine — and then leaves you to carry everything a vendor would normally carry. Centurion is the same class of engine, with the custody and the accountability both in place.
The most respected free personal agent in the world, and the closest in spirit to what we believe. It is also a project you run yourself. Centurion is the finished version of that idea — verified, delivered, and answerable.
Grok Bot is sold as a team: multiple always-on agents with their own computer, signed into your tools, priced per seat — and living on xAI's platform. Centurion is one brain for one human, on a machine you hold. Those are two different answers to the same question: whose machine, and whose key.
The difference in one line
Two live in a vendor's cloud, two hand you the keys and walk away. Centurion is the one that hands you the keys — and stays.
Sources & basis
Facts about Muse are drawn from Meta's launch material at about.fb.com and the product pages at muse.ai; Hermes Agent from hermes-agent.nousresearch.com; OpenClaw from openclaw.ai and its integrations directory; Grok Bot from x.ai/news and x.ai/bot; ClawBox from clawbox.com and docs.clawbox.com — read on 10 September 2026 and re-verified 22 September 2026. Reported figures (Muse's $20 / $100 tiers) are labelled as reported in the dossiers and are not stated by the vendor on the page read. Centurion pricing: Brain €50/month, Core €150/month, billed monthly, cancel anytime. All product names and marks are the property of their respective owners; this page is an independent comparison and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any vendor named here.
Integration claims about Centurion are held to the Integrations Program registry — every entry tested and evidenced on release v5.3.10 before it is published. Centurion pricing: Brain €50/mo · Core €150/mo billed monthly · cancel anytime. Facts read 29 September 2026.