Arlo vs Poke — which AI assistant is right for you?

You talk to both Poke and Arlo like a person, but they're built for different jobs. Poke is a personal assistant that lives in your messaging apps and helps you run your own digital life. It was built by The Interaction Company, which Cognition — the AI lab behind the Devin coding agent — acquired on 23 July 2026 in a deal reported in the low nine figures. Arlo is an AI colleague for work. It runs in the channels your team already uses, takes real actions through tool access that's governed and approved, and logs everything it does.

Want a sharp, proactive assistant just for you? Poke is a strong consumer pick. Want something your whole team can lean on inside its existing workflows, with reviewer approvals and admin controls? That's the gap Arlo fills.

What Poke is (as of August 2026)

Poke positions itself as a personal assistant you reach over the messaging apps you already have open. From its public materials:

• It works over Apple Messages (iMessage), WhatsApp, and Telegram, in both text and voice messages.
• It's aimed at individual consumers — the tagline is that it "fits into your life, not the other way around."
• It connects to apps like Gmail, calendars, Notion, GitHub, and Asana, and can act on its own.
• It ships "Poke Recipes" and a developer "Kitchen" for custom automations.
• Public pricing lists Free, Pro, and Ultra tiers, all built around one person's use.

What Poke does well is make AI feel as easy as texting a friend, and it found a real audience doing it — Cognition put the figure at more than 100 million messages exchanged in the three months before the acquisition.

What the Cognition acquisition changes. Poke continues to run, and Cognition has said Poke gains its models and infrastructure. The stated strategic reason for the deal, though, was to bring Poke's conversational style into Devin, Cognition's coding agent — so Poke's personality is now an ingredient in someone else's roadmap as well as a product of its own. If you're buying for a team, that's the thing to ask about: not whether Poke works today, but where a consumer texting assistant sits inside a company whose flagship is a developer tool. Product details shift, so check Poke's own site before you decide.

What Arlo is

Arlo is one AI colleague for the workspace. There's no separate chat app to live in. It works inside the tools a team already uses: iMessage and SMS, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and live phone calls. It remembers context across conversations and sends a morning briefing of what changed overnight.

It connects to Slack, Gmail, Notion, Linear, GitHub, and 3,000+ other tools. For software with no API, it logs in once through a secure browser session and clicks, reads, and fills out forms the way a person would.

Governance is the part that sets it apart, and it's on by default. Every connection clears policy before each run. Drafts, sends, and writes wait on a reviewer you pick. Each tool call, source, and approval lands in a full audit trace you can go back and read.

Feature comparison

Capability	Poke (personal)	Arlo (work / teams)
Primary audience	Individual consumers	Teams and businesses
Messaging channels	iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram	iMessage and SMS, Slack, Microsoft Teams
Live phone calls	Not a stated focus	Yes — inbound and outbound calls
Persistent memory	Yes	Yes, plus a morning briefing of changes
Integrations	Connects to popular apps	3,000+ tools
No-API tool access	Not a stated focus	Yes — secure browser sessions
Reviewer approvals	Not a stated focus	Yes — drafts/sends/writes await a reviewer
Audit trail	Not a stated focus	Full audit trace of calls, sources, approvals
Admin policy / roles / SSO	Not a stated focus	Yes, on request

This table reflects each product's stated positioning as of August 2026. "Not a stated focus" for Poke means its public materials emphasize personal use, not that the capability is impossible.

Which one is right for you

Pick Poke for yourself. One lightweight thread that handles your email, calendar, and errands, with no team controls to babysit.

Pick Arlo when the assistant acts for a team and the work carries stakes. Its reach across Slack and Microsoft Teams, its ability to make and take phone calls, and its governance model are all built for shared, accountable work. If you're choosing for work specifically, our guides on an AI assistant for founders and an AI assistant for sales go deeper.

On pricing, Arlo starts free — $100 in credits for connecting Slack — then runs on prepaid credits: 400 credits per $1 at every amount, from $50 up, one-time or monthly, with credits that last 12 months from purchase; admin policy, roles, SSO, and audit export are available on request.

Governance is the real difference

A personal assistant optimizes for one user's convenience. An AI colleague has to hold up in front of teammates, customers, and auditors. That changes what the product has to do. Arlo treats every action as something that might need review: connections pass policy before each run, sensitive steps wait on an approver you name, and the audit trace records what happened and why. That's why you can point Arlo at real workflows and not just personal to-dos.

We wrote up what the Cognition deal signals for buyers in Cognition bought Poke — what it means. Still weighing options? Read our broader Poke alternatives overview and our explainer on the AI executive assistant category.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between Arlo and Poke? Poke — built by The Interaction Company, acquired by Cognition in July 2026 — is a personal AI assistant that lives in your messaging apps and helps you run your own digital life. Arlo is an AI colleague for work: it runs in iMessage and SMS, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and on live phone calls, takes governed action in connected tools, and logs every run to an audit trace. Poke is built for one person; Arlo is built for a team.

Can Arlo do everything Poke does? For personal messaging tasks, largely yes — you text it like a person and it handles email, calendar, and errands. The reverse is not true: Poke does not offer Slack and Microsoft Teams as first-class surfaces, does not place and take live phone calls, and does not ship approval gates or an audit trail.

Is Arlo or Poke better for a team? Arlo. The difference is governance rather than features: Arlo resolves each connection through policy before a run, holds consequential sends and writes for a reviewer, and records what ran and who approved it. A personal assistant optimises for one user's convenience, which is the wrong default once an assistant acts on behalf of a company.

Can Arlo make phone calls like a person? Yes — Arlo places and takes real calls, then summarises the call and updates your records. Poke does not offer live calling.

How much does Arlo cost compared with Poke? They are priced differently in kind. Arlo starts free — connecting Slack grants your workspace $100 in credits (40,000) — then you buy prepaid credits at 400 per $1, in amounts from $50 to $50,000, and they expire 12 months after purchase. At that rate $50 is roughly 625 messages, or 69 researched answers with sources. Admin policy, roles, SSO, and audit export are available on request. Poke is light-free with heavier use paid — check Poke's own site for its current pricing.

Can I use both? Nothing stops you, but they overlap heavily on personal tasks. Most people pick one for their own life and add Arlo when the work involves teammates, customers, or anything that needs a reviewer.

Try Arlo

If you need an AI colleague that works inside your team's tools with governed actions and a full audit trail, try Arlo.