I Tested Every Major AI Agent for a Day. Here’s the Best One

Last year, I remember sitting in WIRED’s office, complaining to my colleagues nonstop about how much AI agents suck. They were just bad at everything.

As a software reporter, I sat through meeting after meeting where tech bros —mostly men—demonstrated how their new agent would revolutionize my everyday life and automate away the tedium. The catch was that none of these so-called “agents” actually worked.

Fast-forward to today, and always-on AI agents are booming, with major players racing to release their own versions to attract early adopters. The key reason these personal agents are hitting the larger zeitgeist, beyond Silicon Valley nerds, is that they work. Well, at least more reliably than last year. AI agents still make mistakes, but I also see significant improvements in following through on tasks and controlling a browser. These little guys got their glow-up.

It can be hard to know where to start with AI agents and which one best fits your automation needs. So I spent a day experimenting with every major AI agent to understand their strengths and weaknesses. Before going to bed on Wednesday last week, I set up six always-on agents on my iPhone: Meta’s Muse, OpenAI’s Dots, Instinct, Anthropic’s Claude Duet, Google’s Gemini Spark, and xAI’s Grok Bot.

Each agent differs slightly in price and function. Muse is free to use and has dominated the smartphone app download charts since its September release. Instinct is also free, but you need an invite code from a user; it’s operated through your texts rather than an app. OpenAI’s Dots are behind a $100-a-month paywall, the most expensive I tested, and built inside of ChatGPT. Google’s Gemini Spark is a beta inside the Gemini app and costs $20 a month. xAI’s Grok Bot costs $30 a month and is in its own app. Lastly, Anthropic’s Claude Duet costs $20 a month and is the newest of the bunch—released as a wait-listed research preview the night before my tests.

OpenClaw isn't on my list. Despite the AI agent sparking much of this innovation earlier this year, it’s too clunky for the average person to set up. Maybe it will be in a future ranking, where I could also include smaller players like Hermes by Nous Research and Poke.

What Exactly Is an AI Agent?

If you’ve never used an AI agent—I have zero judgment for the holdouts —it's like texting a digital assistant to complete tasks: scan your email for important missed messages, track vacation flight deals, and help with daily shopping decisions.

Compared to a chatbot’s turn-based experience, these tools are more proactive and will nudge you first when they detect an opportunity to be helpful. All of your messages with these agents are often stored in a single thread that feels like a group text. The AI agents complete many of these tasks by controlling a virtual browser, essentially their own computer for internet access.

The Rubric

I’ve tested AI software from a nontechnical perspective for the last few years, so I feel especially qualified to help guide you through this moment. I designed five basic tests to run each agent through, enacting all this chaos over 24 hours to gauge their proactivity, direction following, and browsing abilities. (Somehow, my iPhone didn’t melt into a puddle.) I scored each attempt on a scale of 1 to 5, and tallied the results at the end to crown a winner—and hand out an award for most annoying.

This is not an endorsement of any of these AI agents. The software remains nascent and often fraught with privacy and security concerns. These agents work best when connected to your personal data, like email and calendars, but require a level of trust that could ward off some users. For example, an X user claimed he recently connected AI agents to his bank account and work Slack, and then was mortified when an agent posted how much money he had for his colleagues to see.

Additionally, these tests are a limited sliver of what the tools can do. All of the agents will improve over time, as you share more data about yourself and how you like to complete tasks. I only shared my personal Google Calendar and Gmail with the tools, so I didn’t fully expose the AI agents, Billy Evans–style, to everything.

Morning Briefing

On Thursday mornings, WIRED’s Gear desk meets to chat about current coverage plans and sometimes pitch ideas for the next week. So, I wanted to see which AI agent put together the best tech news briefing and could use that information to generate a compelling headline. Companies often tout these tools as being great for compiling morning dossiers that keep you up-to-date on important events and breaking news.

I sent each AI agent an extensive prompt detailing my areas of coverage at WIRED, along with context about how this pitch would be used. Even though I asked the AI agents to take 30 minutes and really do deep research before answering, only Meta’s Muse and OpenAI’s Dots actually kept researching for most of the allotted time. The other AI agents either instantaneously spit out a pitch or sent me the headline after a couple of minutes of searching. While not a major mistake, it suggests that in this instance Muse and Dots were a bit better at following my instructions—a critical function of an AI agent.

The content of these six AI-generated pitches was a different beast. As you might have already guessed, the pitches didn’t exactly go over well in the editorial meeting. I could see my colleague’s eyes starting to glaze over as I read each headline and description. Gemini Spark generated the best angle, contrasting how Walmart created ways for third-party agents to use its shopping platform while Amazon recently gave Muse the boot. My colleagues, when they stopped yawning, didn’t seem too concerned about getting scooped by an agent.

Gemini Spark: 5/5. A conversational headline that identifies a core tension online.

Walmart Wants Your AI Agent to Buy Your Groceries. Amazon Is Calling the Cops. As retail giants clash over autonomous checkout, giving an AI companion like Meta’s Muse a weekly spending allowance reveals what happens when we stop clicking “Add to Cart” and outsource our domestic appetites to software.

Claude Duet: 4/5. Another interesting and timely pitch.

ChatGPT's Locked Chats Hide Your Secrets From Everyone but OpenAI. OpenAI's new PIN-protected chats treat ChatGPT like the diary a lot of people already use it as, but they guard what you say from roommates and coworkers, not from the company itself.

Muse: 3/5. Not bad, but not that strong.

I Let Claude Duet Text Me First—and It Spent My Claude Plan While I Wasn’t Looking. Anthropic’s new proactive agent promises to watch your inbox, calendar, and invoices so you don’t have to, but every time it checks in on you, drafts a reply you never asked for, or builds a dashboard overnight, it quietly bills that work to the same usage limit you pay for to chat.

Dots: 2/5. More evergreen than newsy.