Poke Alternatives in 2026: For Calls, Teams, Privacy or Your Mac

The best Poke alternative depends on the limit you ran into. Arlo places phone calls on its free plan. Martin adds an iPhone app with voice mode. Lindy is built for teams. OpenClaw runs on your own machine. Merlin, on the Mac, handles web errands, meetings and people follow-ups. Poke remains the simple choice for an assistant that lives in your texts.

Part of the appeal of Poke is that there's nothing new to open, so outgrowing it can feel oddly specific: one missing phone call, one automation that keeps slowing down, one line in a privacy policy. Poke's strengths come first here, then each of those reasons in turn with the product that answers it, with published prices side by side.

What Poke does well

Poke is a personal AI assistant you reach by text or voice message, with no separate app to learn. Poke's docs list Apple Messages, Telegram, WhatsApp and RCS as the places to talk to it, and it handles email, calendar, reminders and web search from there. It's also proactive: Poke's site describes it using your connected services and memory to step in without being asked.

The free entry point is real. Poke's Free plan costs $0, asks for no card, and connects your apps, email and calendar. Poke's integration guide names Linear, Todoist, Notion, Asana, GitHub, Supabase and others, and you can add your own through a custom MCP server (MCP is a standard way to connect outside tools). Recipes bundle a setup into a link you can share. Release notes also show a June 2026 website builder and a @poke.com email address.

If you mainly want reminders, inbox help and calendar changes in the thread you already check all day, on Gmail or Outlook, Poke is a strong fit and may be all you need. Background automations come with Pro at $19 a month.

Why Poke users start shopping around

Poke's own pages explain most of the reasons people shop around: plan prices, who places phone calls, usage limits, data use, approvals, mail support and its maker's move to Cognition.

• The gap between plans. Poke Pro is $19 a month and Ultra is $199 a month, with nothing listed in between.
• Real-world tasks sit at the top. Poke Human, where a person handles reservations, calls, orders and rides, is included with Ultra. Real-world expenses are charged at cost on top.
• Usage limits on heavy automations. Poke's usage guide says Free drops to a lighter mode at its allowance. Pro stays quick for everyday requests, but the most demanding work waits for a refill, and frequently firing automations are a common cause.
• Data use. Poke's privacy policy, last updated September 11, 2026, says data may go toward AI model training, except for users who select Maximum Privacy.
• Approval rules. Poke's release notes mention an approval step when drafting email and a preview of attachments before sending, but its FAQ and integration guide don't set out when Poke asks first. Try it on your own account before connecting a work inbox.
• Mail providers. Poke's FAQ covers Gmail and Outlook and says there are no immediate plans for iCloud or Yahoo Mail.
• A change of owner. Poke's release notes say its maker, The Interaction Company of California, is joining Cognition, the maker of the Devin coding agent, in a July 23, 2026 note. The same note says Poke works as before and users don't need to do anything.

For phone calls without Ultra: Arlo

Arlo keeps Poke's text-first setup and adds outbound calling on every plan. Arlo's site says it makes calls, works through phone menus and waits on hold for you, and that you can reach it by iMessage or SMS, WhatsApp, Slack or a phone call. It also runs group plans with polls and checks with you before bookings that need approval.

Arlo's pricing is built on a usage balance: Free includes $20 of usage a month, Plus is $20 a month for $100 of usage, and Max is $100 a month for $500. Calls cost 25 cents per minute of talking and about 1.5 cents per minute on hold. There are no top-ups, so Arlo stops at the limit until the monthly reset or an upgrade. Poke Ultra, by contrast, can carry on with pay-as-you-go usage.

Who Arlo fits: someone whose Poke gap is the phone, especially a few calls a month rather than a daily habit.

To talk to your assistant: Martin

Martin is a personal assistant you can text, phone, email or message in Slack, and it has its own iPhone app. Martin's site lists calendar, inbox, reminders, to-do lists and wake-up calls, on the web and in an iOS app with voice mode, notifications and shortcuts.

Martin's pricing page shows no free plan and advertises seven days free. Basic costs $35 a month, or $21 a month if you pay yearly, and comes with basic models, a limit on proactive actions and two tasks at a time. Pro costs $49 a month, or $30 a month if you pay yearly, without those caps.

Who Martin fits: an iPhone user who prefers speaking to typing and would pay more than Poke Pro for a phone app. Martin's site lists the web and iOS, with no Android app mentioned.

For work your team shares: Lindy

Lindy treats the assistant as a coworker rather than a personal contact. Lindy's site calls it an AI employee for your whole team, available in Slack threads, iMessage and your email inbox. Lindy's pricing page lists meeting notes, daily briefs, more than 1,500 integrations and MCP support, and says it waits for approval before actions with outside impact, such as sending email or updating tickets.

The cost model is built for a company. Free gives $50 in credits that last seven days. Team starts at $49.99 a month for 5,000 credits, every active user is billed, and credits pool across the workspace. That's a lot for one person with a personal inbox, and a reasonable shape for a small team living in Slack.

Who Lindy fits: a team that wants one assistant in shared channels, not a solo user looking for a cheaper Poke.

To keep memory on your own machine: OpenClaw

OpenClaw is the option for anyone whose reason for leaving Poke is the data. OpenClaw's site describes an MIT-licensed assistant you install yourself on Mac, Windows or Linux, with state and memory kept there rather than in a vendor cloud. You talk to it from WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Slack, Discord, iMessage and others, 29 channels in all. There's no subscription, though any AI model you connect has its own cost.

The trade is that you become the administrator. OpenClaw's setup guide needs a current Node.js, an AI provider login or API key, and a few terminal commands to install a background service. Its security guide assumes everyone sharing an install trusts each other, and notes that agents with messaging access can reach across conversations and channels by default until you restrict them. Your model provider also still receives what you send it, unless you run a local model.

Who OpenClaw fits: someone comfortable in a terminal who wants control over where memory lives and is willing to maintain it.

For web errands and people follow-ups on a Mac: Merlin

Merlin, which we make, takes a different shape from Poke: a Mac desktop app rather than a contact in your phone. You work with it in its own chat window or over any app with ⌥Space. It runs web tasks in its own browser, such as filling forms, ordering or checking in, and stops before paying or submitting anything it can't take back. A People panel tracks who still needs an answer from you and who has gone quiet, and Merlin records meetings (paid plans add transcripts) and sends a brief about 10 minutes before each one.

Approvals depend on where the work starts. Ask in chat to send an email or change an event and a card comes back to read, change and approve. Routines run unattended, so a routine you allow to post to Slack posts without a card, and you can also give standing permission for a kind of errand, which removes that final stop for it.

The limits matter if Poke's appeal was its reach. Merlin doesn't work over text, doesn't make phone calls and sends nothing to your phone: messages land in its chat with a desktop notification. It's Mac only, setup insists on a Google account with Gmail and Calendar, so an Outlook-only user should stay with Poke, and browser errands run only while the app is open. Merlin's plans start with a free tier of 5,000 credits a month, then Pro at $29 a month or $278 a year. Its privacy policy says personal information isn't sold, and sends questions about AI providers' retention and training terms to the team, so ask if that's your deciding factor.

Who Merlin fits: someone who spends the workday on a Mac in Gmail and wants more done at the desk, including meeting notes (see how note takers compare) and the kind of work you might hand a chief of staff. If only your inbox bothers you, the Fyxer page covers narrower email tools.

Poke, Arlo, Martin, Lindy, OpenClaw and Merlin compared

Poke and the five alternatives differ most on where you use them and who places phone calls. Prices are as published, in US dollars, and credits buy different amounts in each product.

How to choose a Poke alternative

Start with the sentence that sounds most like your problem.

• "I need a call made, not a text." Try Arlo first. Poke Ultra is the alternative if you'd rather have a person do it and the $199 a month makes sense.
• "I want to speak to it on my iPhone." Martin, after checking that Basic's two-task limit won't get in the way.
• "My team needs this too." Lindy, and count active users before you commit.
• "I don't want a company holding this memory." OpenClaw, if you can maintain it. If you can't, Poke's Maximum Privacy setting at least keeps your data out of model training, though Poke still holds it.
• "Most of my day is at a Mac." Merlin, as long as you use Gmail and don't need it on your phone.
• "Poke is fine, it just slows down." Stay. Poke's usage guide suggests trimming automations that fire often, which costs nothing to try.

How to move off Poke cleanly

Leaving Poke is mostly a matter of order: test the replacement first, then disconnect your accounts, then delete.

1. Write down the automations and reminders you rely on, so you can rebuild them in the new tool.
2. Run one real task from that list in the alternative, ideally the task that made you look, before you cancel anything.
3. Open poke.com/integrations and choose Disconnect from Poke for each service.
4. On Pro or Ultra, cancel the plan first and check that it ended, since Poke's FAQ doesn't say whether deleting an account stops billing. Then go to poke.com/settings/privacy and click Delete Account. Poke's FAQ allows 24 hours for full deletion, and says backups and legal holds can run longer.
5. If you connected Google, you can also revoke access in your Google account, as Poke's privacy policy notes.