Catch alternatives — AI assistants for teams and personal life

If you're shopping for Catch alternatives, the first thing to sort out is what job you're hiring for. Catch is a personal AI assistant you talk to. Poke and Martin sit in the same lane. Lindy is a work-automation tool. Arlo is an AI colleague built for a team — it works across every channel your team uses, answers the phone, and holds every action behind an approval gate. Those are genuinely different products, so the right pick depends on whether you're outfitting yourself or a team.

Everything below is real to the best of our knowledge as of July 2026. Because we can't verify each competitor's live feature set, treat the specifics as "as of July 2026." After the rundown, I'll make the case for Arlo if you want one governed assistant spanning iMessage, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and live calls.

The main Catch alternatives at a glance

Assistant	Where it works	Best for
Catch	Text and chat (personal assistant)	Personal tasks and daily help
Poke	iMessage, SMS, Telegram (WhatsApp in some markets)	Personal tasks over text
Martin	Voice, text, email	Voice-first scheduling and reminders
Lindy	Email, Slack, calendars, business tools	Workflow automation at work
Arlo	iMessage/SMS, Slack, Teams, live phone calls	An AI colleague across a team's tools, with governance

Catch

Catch is positioned as a personal AI assistant — the kind you message to manage your day and get quick help. As of July 2026 the pitch is a friendly, conversational helper for one person's tasks and reminders. That's a real and useful lane. Want the direct head-to-head? See Arlo vs Catch.

Poke

Poke comes from The Interaction Company and the whole pitch is that using it feels like texting a friend. As of July 2026 it runs over iMessage, SMS, and Telegram, with WhatsApp in some markets. The sweet spot is everyday personal stuff — planning your day, juggling your calendar, the back-and-forth you'd do over text anyway. For the direct comparison, see Arlo vs Poke.

Martin

Martin is the voice-first one. As of July 2026 it hooks into your calendar, email, and messaging, and you can talk to it, text it, or email it. It's mostly described around scheduling, reminders, drafting quick messages, and daily updates. If what you want is something you can speak to like a personal assistant, that's Martin's lane. See Arlo vs Martin for the head-to-head.

Lindy

Lindy is built to get work done, not chat. As of July 2026 it's a workflow automator that plugs into email, Slack, your calendar, and a long list of business apps — triaging inboxes, sitting in on meetings, and chaining multi-step workflows on its own. If your problem is repetitive business processes rather than a chatty assistant in your texts, Lindy is the obvious pick here.

Why Arlo is the best Catch alternative for teams

Catch, Poke, and Martin are personal assistants — one person, their tasks, their texts. That's a fine fit for an individual. But if you're bringing an assistant into a team, the questions change: Can everyone reach it where they already work? Can you trust it to act? Can you prove what it did? Arlo is built for exactly those questions.

• It works everywhere, including the phone. Arlo is in iMessage and SMS, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and live phone calls. No new app to learn, and no dropped context when a thread becomes a call.
• It remembers, and it briefs you. Arlo holds onto what matters across conversations and sends a morning briefing on what changed overnight, so nobody re-explains themselves every time.
• It acts, and connects to real tools. Arlo works across 3,000+ tools. When an app has no API, it signs in once through a secure browser session and operates it by hand — clicking, reading, and filling forms the way a person would.
• Governance is the default, not an add-on. Every send and every tool write pauses for a reviewer you choose, and every action lands in a full audit trail. That's the real line between an AI colleague you can put on real work and a personal chat-bot. See how approvals before sending work.
• It scales past one person. Arlo starts free, with usage tiers at $20, $100, and $200 a month as you scale. The Business plan is custom for orgs that need admin policy and audit export.

How to choose

Pick Catch, Poke, or Martin if you want a personal assistant for your own tasks, texts, and reminders. Pick Lindy if the goal is automating business workflows across apps. Pick Arlo if you want one AI colleague across iMessage, Slack, Teams, and calls, with memory and governed actions your whole team can audit. Comparing options for a specific team? See how Arlo works in Slack or as an assistant that makes phone calls, and browse the full use cases and comparisons.

Try Arlo

Arlo is the Catch alternative for teams that want one assistant everywhere they work, with an approval gate on every send and a full audit trail. Try Arlo to put a colleague inside the tools you already use.