OpenClaw vs Teya

OpenClaw and Teya are both personal assistants tracked by AIDiveForge. Below is a side-by-side comparison of pricing, capabilities, platforms, and ownership — sourced from each tool's live website and verified before publishing.

OpenClaw

OpenClaw runs as a self-hosted agent on your machine, connecting to WhatsApp, Telegram, or other chat apps you already use, then executing multi-step tasks autonomously — clearing inboxes, managing calendars, controlling local devices. Your context and skills live on your hardware, not a vendor's server. The agent extends itself: you describe a new capability in chat and it builds the skill. Community reports and the GitHub source confirm it is still in beta, which means rough edges surface on tasks requiring precise sequencing or app-specific edge cases. Teams hitting those edges are currently writing custom extensions rather than finding a polished fallback.

Teya

Teya is an open-source, Android-based home agent that listens, holds context across conversations, and acts across apps — running on a spare phone mounted on a wall. There is no cloud subscription, no hosted API, and no vendor to call when it stops working: you own the stack. The README describes skills, a memory layer, and the ability to coordinate family schedules rather than just execute one-off commands. That self-contained architecture is also the ceiling — setup requires Android build tooling, and any skill that doesn't exist yet is yours to write. Families comfortable with a Gradle build and a spare Android device will find this fits a gap no commercial product fills; families who are not will hit a wall before the first reminder fires.

Attribute	OpenClaw	Teya
Pricing	Free	Free
Free trial	No	No
Open source	Yes	Yes
Has API	No	No
Self-hosted option	Yes	Yes
Platforms	macOS, Linux, Windows, Raspberry Pi	Android 8.0+
Pros	Runs entirely on your hardware with your own LLM subscriptions, so your conversation history and personal context never touch a third-party server — which means no vendor data retention and no subscription lock-in at the model layer. Operates through chat apps you already use (WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord), so there is no new interface to onboard, and tasks reach the agent wherever you already communicate. Self-extending via conversation — describe a new capability and the agent builds the skill — so you avoid maintaining a separate automation script every time your workflow changes. Open-source with a hackable extensions directory, which means when a built-in skill falls short you can inspect and modify the exact code path rather than filing a support ticket and waiting. Persistent memory across sessions, so context from previous tasks carries forward — you don't re-explain your preferences every time you open a new conversation.	Persistent household memory across conversations, so the agent knows that Tuesday means football pickup without being re-briefed every week — which is the specific failure mode of every commercial smart speaker. Fully self-hosted on a spare Android phone with no cloud dependency, which means household calendar data does not leave your network and the agent does not stop working when a vendor's pricing changes. Apache-2.0 licensed with a configurable model layer per THIRD_PARTY_MODELS.md, so swapping the underlying LLM is a configuration change rather than a platform migration. Skills architecture described in the repo allows the agent's capabilities to grow, so a household that starts with reminders can extend to home-control tasks without replacing the platform. Zero infrastructure cost beyond the Android device, so there is no monthly bill eroding the case for keeping it running long-term.
Cons	Beta-stage sequencing: tasks requiring precise multi-step coordination across third-party apps (e.g., booking a flight and updating a calendar entry contingent on confirmation) break in ways that aren't predictable before you run them. Teams work around this by breaking tasks into smaller explicit steps rather than trusting end-to-end autonomous execution. No API surface is available, which means any existing internal tool or dashboard that needs to trigger the agent programmatically has no integration path. Teams that want the agent embedded in a broader automation pipeline — not just driven through chat — are building that bridge themselves or switching to an agent framework that exposes HTTP endpoints. Companion app requirements (macOS 15+, Windows 10 20H2+) exclude teams on older hardware or locked OS versions. Those users fall back to the CLI-only path, which loses the native tray and chat UI that make the product accessible to non-developers.	Setup requires Android build tooling and Gradle configuration — there is no APK download or one-tap install described in the README. Any household member who is not the person who built it cannot recover from a broken state, which means a single point of failure sits between the family and their morning reminders. Any capability the agent does not already have requires writing a new skill, which means extending Teya for a genuinely new use case — say, integrating a specific calendar API or a home-automation system — puts you in the position of maintaining a fork. When that maintenance burden compounds across two or three extensions, teams move to a platform with a plugin marketplace rather than a skills directory they authored themselves. No API surface is available, per the project page, which means Teya cannot be called programmatically from other household tools or automation scripts. Households that want bidirectional integration with an existing Home Assistant setup or a third-party calendar service hit a dead end and either build a custom bridge or switch to a platform that exposes an API.

Bottom line

OpenClaw and Teya are closely matched on pricing model, openness, and API availability — pick by feature set and platform support in the table above.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between OpenClaw and Teya?

OpenClaw is Free and open source, while Teya is Free and open source. Compare pricing, free trial, API, platforms, and pros/cons in the table above on AIDiveForge.

Is OpenClaw better than Teya?

It depends on your workflow. Use the side-by-side attributes (pricing, open source, API, self-hosted, platforms) to decide. AIDiveForge does not rank a universal winner — we publish verified facts so you can choose.

OpenClaw vs Teya: which should I pick?

Pick OpenClaw if its pricing model, openness, or platform fit matches your constraints; pick Teya otherwise. Check free-trial availability on each listing if you want to test before committing.

Comparison data is sourced and verified by the AIDiveForge data pipeline. AIDiveForge is editorially independent.