AI executive assistants in October 2026: ten tools compared on what each does, costs and keeps about you

The field moved again after this page was first written in September. Town shortened its Pro trial, Lindy repriced around a team seat, Hey Noah made the inbox connection optional, Instinct raised a billion dollars and began pushing product suggestions, Catch now labels sign-up closed, and Tab came out of stealth. Every entry below was re-read at the vendor's own pages on 2026-10-12. Ten assistants are compared on what a client-facing professional needs to know before paying: where it lives, what it does on your behalf, what it costs — in one dated table — and what it keeps about you, and whether you can open that record.

Ten assistants, one line each

1. Catch — admin done end to end — scheduling, travel, calls, inbox — from an assistant that says it asks before it acts; one flat plan, sign-up closed.
2. Hey Noah — scheduling and follow-up by text, with phone calls; the inbox connection is optional, and without it Noah sees only the mail you send or CC it on.
3. Town — an assistant with its own @town.com address you can CC, meeting and morning briefings on a schedule, an iPhone app, and a list of memories you can view and delete in Settings.
4. Poke — a free, texting-first assistant on a connected Gmail or Outlook, with real people on its Ultra tier; part of Cognition since July.
5. Lindy — "an AI employee for your whole team," billed per active user, with memory that "lives in plain files."
6. Instinct — the deepest reach on the list — it uses a phone and a computer the way you would — behind a waitlist, with a documented record to read first.
7. Martin — a low-cost assistant that calls, texts and emails, with an iPhone app.
8. Del — "your personal helper for everyday life" over text, with saved cards and bank connections so it can pay.
9. Microsoft Scout — a desktop agent for Microsoft 365, still in Frontier preview, with memories you can review and delete.
10. Equerry — the one that knows only what you sent it — a CC'd thread, a PDF, a voice memo, a note — briefs you before the call from that, and lists every remembered fact where you can delete it. On the App Store for iPhone and iPad.

Two questions that sort the list

Does it act for you, or brief you? Nine of the ten act on your behalf — book, call, send, pay, update a system, run a task — seven of them from your own connected accounts and two, Lindy and Microsoft Scout, from a team workspace; the useful follow-up is whether they ask first. Does it work from accounts you connect, or from items you send? Most need the whole mailbox and calendar — that is how they can act. Hey Noah now takes a CC'd thread without one; Town accepts a CC'd thread at its own address, but its get-started steps include connecting Gmail and its pages do not describe use without one; Equerry takes nothing else. Then the column every listicle skips: what it keeps about you, and whether you can open the record — read it, correct it, delete one thing.

On evidence: each entry was written from the vendor's own site, docs, pricing page, FAQ and privacy policy as they read on 2026-10-12, quoted where the wording matters, with press used only for funding, launch dates and one set of tester reports. Where a vendor's pages say nothing on a point, we say so — silence is not a denial. For salary and fractional rates, see our guide to what an executive assistant costs; this page is for choosing a tool, not hiring a person.

Entry by entry, as read on 2026-10-12

1. Catch — the widest admin coverage, if it has a seat for you

"Your AI assistant for email, scheduling, travel, and calls" — "Hire your admin" (the price is in the table below). It reaches you by text, Slack, Teams, email or phone, connects Gmail, Outlook, Google Calendar and "76+ tools," and has "no app to manage." The line it leads with: "Catch acts only with the right context and permission. When unsure, it asks, never guesses." Its security page adds "Catch only performs actions within the permissions you grant and with your approval," and lists SOC 2 Type II. It came out of stealth on 3 September 2026 with a $5 million seed round (Tech Startups).

What it keeps, and the catch. "No two execs are alike. Catch adapts to your rhythm, priorities, and preferences." No page describes a place to read that profile, correct it or delete one thing; the controls are account-level — "Users may revoke access or request deletion at any time" — and "Catch uses your data to continuously improve the experience for you and others." Sign-up is closed except by application ("Limited Spots"), and the connection is your whole mailbox and calendar. Pick it if you want the doing half of an EA's job covered as completely as software currently covers it, and you are comfortable handing over the accounts.

2. Hey Noah — scheduling by text, inbox optional

Its FAQ: "an AI executive assistant that works in the channels you already use: SMS, email, WhatsApp, and Slack" — "No app to download, no dashboard to log into" — "built for executives, founders, and senior professionals." Scheduling is the depth: it connects your Google Calendar, "understands your priorities, preferences (meeting times, buffers, focus blocks)," proposes times, "handles the back-and-forth, and books the meeting." It also phones: "Noah makes the call, handles the conversation, and texts you the confirmation."

Email, and what it keeps. "Inbox access is optional when you connect Google. Without it, Noah only sees the emails you send or CC to it. With it, Noah can read your inbox to find scheduling requests and answer your questions." Its answer to "Can Noah send emails on my behalf?" still ends "Noah only has access to the emails you've CC'd Noah on." It sends "from its own account on your behalf," or "from your Gmail only when you approve the specific email"; it "handles scheduling, calendar updates and replies on its own," and "If you want to approve something before it goes out, ask Noah to show you the message first." The pages describe no list of what Noah holds about you; the control is "You can disconnect any account at any time." It "does not currently handle" travel booking or "Financial transactions, legal, HR, or medical tasks," and it is built around the logistics of your relationships, not the substance of your client work. Pick it if scheduling and follow-up chasing are what you would hand an assistant first, and you want to choose how much of your mail it sees.

3. Town — its own address, briefings on a schedule, and a memory list you can open

"Learns how you work, then gets to work." Every Townie has an address like Bo@town.com, plus "Town for iPhone," "Town Desktop" for macOS, Slack and text messaging; WhatsApp and Telegram are "Inbound-only." Its email docs (updated 8 October): "CC your assistant on a thread with anyone (teammates, customers, candidates) and tell it what you need" — "It replies to the whole thread from its own @town.com address"; a connected mailbox is required for drafts in your own name and trusted-contact sending. Stock routines are the EA's day — Auto-inbox, a Meeting Briefing that "emails you a concise briefing," a daily Morning Briefing — and its homepage: "Town never sends emails or calendar invites without your approval." It raised a $55 million Series A on 3 June 2026 (Town's release).

What it keeps, and the catch. The fullest answer here, and better than in September: "go to Settings → Profile to view and delete memories," or ask "What memories do you have stored?"; the Wiki, in Town's own words at town.com/wiki, is "a living synthesis of your profile, your work habits, and your preferences" that "refreshes nightly" — "Select a line to change it." It is built by reading "sent emails across your connected accounts," so the unit of sharing is still the account for most of what it does, and the record is a synthesis about you — style, priorities, people — not an archive of what a client said in a thread with the original attached. Automatic meeting briefings start at Pro (see the table). Pick it if you want an assistant that works your inbox with approvals, briefs you on a schedule, and lets you open what it has concluded about you.

4. Poke — free, texting-first, now inside Cognition

Poke "lives in Apple Messages, Telegram, WhatsApp, and RCS" (its docs); no iPhone app is documented. It works from accounts you connect — "full support for Gmail and Outlook inboxes, calendars, and contact sync" — and "Most features in Poke are free." Poke Human "dispatches real-world tasks to a real person on your behalf" and is "included with Poke Ultra" (see the table). The homepage carries a "Poke is joining Cognition" banner; the last release note is 23 July 2026.

What it keeps, and the catch. Its FAQ says human operators "cannot access your chat history, memories, or integrations," but docs, FAQ and privacy notice describe no list of those memories to read, edit or delete; the privacy notice (11 September 2026): "We may not be able to modify or delete your personal data in all circumstances." The surface is texting, the reach is the whole connected inbox, and the product has been quiet since July. Pick it if you want a capable free assistant in your messages on top of a connected Gmail or Outlook, for everyday errands.

5. Lindy — an AI employee for the team, by the seat

"Hire Lindy, get it done." Its FAQ: "Lindy is an AI employee for your whole team. Hand it the work you'd give a teammate, like pulling reports, updating your CRM, or clearing your inbox, and it comes back with the work done." Its homepage: "Whether it's Slack, iMessage, or in your browser, Lindy is ready to pitch in." Its FAQ adds email to that list, and "It's sat in every meeting." New since 14 October, per its changelog: "Lindy has its own phone number. It calls businesses for you and answers as your receptionist." The receptionist runs on "US numbers for now." On asking first, its pricing FAQ: "Anything with outside impact waits for approval such as sending an email, updating a ticket, posting to another channel, publishing a doc." If you remember Lindy as a personal assistant, it relaunched around the team on 10 August 2026. Every active user in a workspace is billed; the floor is in the table. Lindy's pages re-read on 2026-10-21.

What it keeps, and the catch. "Its memory is yours to edit. Lindy learns everything about you, and it all lives in plain files. Open the memory folder, read what it remembers, and change it like a doc." Its memory page: "Memory is a set of plain files. Read what Lindy knows, fix it or delete it. Every change is saved." It learns from what you tell it and from meetings, and shares context across the workspace: "Everyone’s Lindy knows it, and admins decide what goes in." It is built and priced for a team; for a solo partner or fractional executive it is the wrong shape by design. Pick it if you run a team on Slack and want one assistant the whole team can hand work to.

6. Instinct — the deepest reach, behind a waitlist, with a record to read first

"Instinct is a personal assistant that understands what you're working on and what's important to you," and it "can use a phone and computer in the same way that humans do"; you text or call it, and there is no app. The site names no price or plan; its terms (last revised 26 August 2026) say "You may be required to pay us fees," and their SMS clause still speaks of "waitlist updates." It raised a $250 million Series B on 26 August and a $1 billion Series C at a $10 billion valuation on 28 September (TechCrunch).

The record, and what it keeps. On 24 August TechCrunch reported early testers' experiences: an inbox still being summarised after access was disconnected; Gmail records not deleted on request, later fixed with a deletion tool in settings; an email sent on a user's behalf without checking. Its terms allow user materials to be used to "develop, provide, maintain and improve the Services," with an opt-out that covers model training only — "If you do not want us to use your Materials to train AI models, you can opt out by visiting app.instinct.com/settings" — and say "even if you disconnect a Connected Service, we may still use the indexed Connected Service Input data." On 30 September TechCrunch reported "Instinct Selections," product suggestions pushed to users unasked; one user said they were based on his email and upcoming trips. Everything it connects to is in scope, and deletion is per connected service or account, not a list you can read item by item. Pick it if you want the most capable agent on this list, can get a spot, and have read the terms in the light of the reports above.

7. Martin — low-cost, calls and texts, with an iPhone app

"Martin manages your calendar, inbox, SMS, phone calls, WhatApp [sic], Slack, and more. Call, text, or email your AI assistant." It places calls, sends texts, drafts and sends email, sets reminders and manages the calendar, and "Get Martin for iOS" makes it one of the few native apps here; two personal tiers, Basic ("Give Martin 2 tasks at a time") and Pro ("Unlimited proactive actions"), "7 days free." Testimonials on its homepage say it "remembers your preferences"; no page describes where you can read, edit or delete what it has kept, and it works from the inbox and calendar you connect. Pick it if you want an inexpensive assistant that will phone the restaurant and text you back.

8. Del — "your personal helper for everyday life"

That is its homepage title today; "No app, no login, just text Del. Try free for 2 weeks." Its founders page calls it "a proactive assistant that lives in your messages" that "handles much of the digital overhead an EA would." Channels: SMS and iMessage, with Telegram and WhatsApp added back over the summer. It acts more than most here — a Vault for cards and logins, bank and Venmo connections, and, per its updates feed, sending from your own Gmail since August (6 August, with CC previews from 27 September) and taking voice messages since the summer (voice memos over SMS from 1 June, an iMessage voice-note fix on 6 July, audio attachments transcribed from 2 October). Gmail, per its privacy policy (30 September 2026; Human Interface, Inc.): "read and write access to your Gmail," reading "recent messages (by default those from the last 7 days)" that are "not persisted to our database," and sending "only when you direct the assistant to do so."

What it keeps, and the catch. "Del remembers everything you tell it," and it can trace a fact's source on request; no page documents a list of remembered facts you can review or delete one by one — account deletion "removes your tasks, notes, chat history, SMS records, and stored Google Calendar OAuth tokens." Its own title says the rest: a helper for everyday life, not a client practice; and its pricing disagrees with itself (see the table). Pick it if the assistant you want is for errands, refunds and reservations over text, and you are happy for it to hold cards and bank connections.

9. Microsoft Scout — a desktop agent for Microsoft 365, still in preview

"Microsoft Scout is a desktop AI application for Windows and macOS that takes action on your behalf. It reads and writes files, runs shell commands, controls a browser, queries your Microsoft 365 data, and works autonomously in the background" — "with your approval before sensitive actions." Every page carries the gate: "You need to be part of the Frontier preview program … to get early access," "This is a preview feature," and in practice a GitHub Copilot Business or Enterprise seat your organisation has enabled. "Does Microsoft Scout work on mobile devices? No." No price and no general-availability date appear on Microsoft's pages (documentation updated 21 August 2026).

What it keeps, and the catch. It "remembers your preferences and decisions across conversations" and "proactively saves important information as you work." Unusually, it records the source: "Each memory tracks its provenance (where it came from): session-inferred, imported, or external." To manage them: "Open Settings. Select View memories in the Memory section. Review stored memories. Delete any that are no longer relevant." Editing in place is not described. It is a tenant product in preview, gated by your IT department, with no phone app; a PDF a client sent to your personal address is outside it. Pick it if your firm is in the Frontier programme and you work inside Microsoft 365 on a desktop.

10. Equerry — the one that knows only what you sent it

Equerry is a personal assistant for iPhone and iPad, and the one entry here built around the third answer to the second question: it knows the material you decided to give it, item by item, and nothing else. You get your own address — something like mark@mail.getequerry.app — and copy it once on the client thread that matters, from the mail app you already use; replies that keep the address on the thread keep arriving, and the original stays in your own mailbox. The contract as a PDF, the whiteboard photo and the screenshot come in from the share sheet; a voice memo recorded in the app on the drive back and a note typed at the gate land in the same place, all searchable together. Routines you set up do the rest: Meeting Prep puts a briefing in your hand before your next meeting, built from your calendar and what you have already saved; a Morning Brief summarises what matters that day; a Reminder is the push with the text you wrote, on the date you chose.

What it keeps, and whether you can see it. When an answer draws on a note you saved, it carries a source chip: tap it to see the passage Equerry used and open the original. For a thread you CC'd, what Equerry remembered from it is listed in Settings → Your memory, each line marked as from that email, and you can delete any line. Nothing expires on a timetable you didn't set. The difference from the other good answers here — Town's Profile and Wiki, Lindy's files, Scout's memory list — is the unit: those are syntheses about you built from accounts or a workspace; this is a record per item you handed over.

Where it falls short. Equerry loses several columns outright. It does not act on your behalf — no calls placed, no table booked, no email sent — where Catch, Hey Noah, Town, Poke, Instinct, Martin, Del and Lindy all do some or all of that. It is not on your calls and does not record or transcribe them; a meeting exists for it only once you have sent something afterwards — the memo, your notes, or a transcript you paste in or forward as a PDF. It does not read a mailbox it was not sent, which is the point, but the choosing is yours to do. It has none of the workspace reach of Scout or Lindy, and no Mac or Windows app. Keep the assistant you already think with for drafting; this one is for remembering. Where it all rests is in our privacy policy. Pick it if your work runs on specific client threads, documents and calls, you want to choose what the assistant sees item by item, and you want to see where an answer came from when it draws on your notes.

Plans and prices, as read on 2026-10-12

One table, one date (Lindy's row re-read on 2026-10-21), so a change touches one place; no third-party plan price appears anywhere else on this page. Figures are exactly as each vendor's page displayed them that day; two vendors' own pages disagree with themselves.

Side by side

Every quotation above was read on 2026-10-12 (Lindy's re-read on 2026-10-21) from the vendors' own pages — homepages, pricing pages, FAQs, docs, terms and privacy notices — except where a press source is named (Tech Startups for Catch, 3 September 2026; the Cognitive Revolution interview of 10 August 2026 for the relaunch, which introduces Lindy's CEO "as he's launching Lindy Teammate, an AI employee that joins your company's Slack"; TechCrunch for Instinct, 24 and 26 August and 28 and 30 September, and for Tab, 7 October), and plan names, prices and controls change, so check the vendor's page before deciding.

If you searched for the best AI personal assistant

The phrase names two shopping lists. In the sense an executive means it — the assistant who runs your working day — the ten above are the list, and several call themselves a personal assistant on their own pages: Instinct, Martin and Del do. The two questions at the top still sort them: act or brief; accounts or items. Equerry is a personal assistant in that working sense — briefings before calls, the thread you CC'd, the memo you recorded — and the one here built to remember what you handed it and show you where an answer came from. If you meant an assistant for yourself and your household outside work, that is a different list with different winners, and it has its own page: the best AI for personal use.

Before you choose

Two arrivals, not ranked. Tab (Terrasoft, Inc.) came out of stealth on 7 October at a reported $300 million valuation (TechCrunch): "an AI you text when you need something done," with "its own computer and browser," behind a waitlist with no price. Persona (Iris Assistant, Inc.) is an iMessage-first assistant with a wearable band and, per its Band page, no subscription for its software; its privacy policy is dated 15 September 2026. Neither is scored.

Seven act for you from connected accounts — Catch, Hey Noah, Town, Poke, Instinct, Martin, Del — differing in how much they do, how much they ask first, and whether you can narrow the door to a CC'd thread: Hey Noah can; Town accepts a CC'd thread at its own address, but its get-started steps include connecting Gmail and its pages do not describe use without one. Two are chosen by teams for a workspace — Lindy and Microsoft Scout. One is built around material you choose item by item. Three of the nine others let you open the record — Town, Lindy, Scout — each a synthesis about you; Equerry's is a list of facts per item you sent, with the passage one tap away when the answer came from a note. So the question is not which AI executive assistant is best. It is: do you need an assistant that acts for you from your accounts, or one that remembers what you chose to give it and briefs you from that — and when it tells you what it knows about a client, can you open the source? If the first, pick from the seven, or from the two if your team lives in Slack or Microsoft 365. If the second, that is the shape Equerry was built to be — alongside, not instead of, whichever of the others does your booking.

Last updated 2026-10-21.

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