Carly vs Sabi: Which AI Executive Assistant Fits You?
Sabi is an AI executive assistant for founders that runs over iMessage, email and Slack, retails at $295 a month, and is built for one person. Carly is an AI assistant and agent builder that works inside your email, calendar and the apps your business runs on, for one person or a team.
The job descriptions overlap almost completely. The way the two products go about the job does not.
The quick answer: pick Sabi if you are one founder who wants a single assistant over text with playbooks switched on for you. Pick Carly if you want the same inbox, calendar and follow-up work started by events instead of texts, running across all of your inboxes at once, and shared with your team. Free Zapier-style workflows; AI agents from $35/month.
Carly vs Sabi at a glance
| Carly | Sabi | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Founders and teams | One founder |
| Sends email as | You, from your Gmail or Outlook | You, from your connected inbox |
| Starts a task | On an event, a schedule, or your request | When you text, or on a routine you set |
| Team use | Shared agents and workflows, each person’s own accounts | Single user; team seats on the roadmap |
| Reaches you by | Email, text, web, ChatGPT plugin, Claude connector | iMessage, SMS, email, Slack, iPhone app |
| Connects to | Thousands of apps through official connections | Gmail, Outlook, Calendar, HubSpot, Stripe, QuickBooks, Shopify, Plaid and more |
| Pricing | Free workflows; agents from $35/mo | $295/mo retail; founding discount while open |
What Sabi is built for
Sabi’s homepage is a letter to the founder working the second shift. The pitch is that you should not have to learn AI, so Sabi lives in a text thread. It triages the inbox and drafts in your voice, guards the calendar, chases leads on a cadence you approve, drafts social posts, and sends a KPI snapshot pulled from Stripe, QuickBooks and your bank. Each night it re-reads the day and updates its memory.
It is careful about trust. An approval rule, enforced in code, holds any message to a third party until you say go. Nothing trains on your data. Staff cannot browse your messages. Those are the right defaults, and Sabi has made them its argument against Meta’s Muse.
What Carly is built for
Carly starts in the same place, the inbox, and handles it the same way: connect Google or Microsoft, and it reads the thread, drafts the reply in your voice and sends it from your address. It finds times, sends invites and reschedules on your real calendar, with booking pages for the people who need a slot. The deal moves in HubSpot, the task lands in Linear, the note files in Notion. Carly connects to thousands of apps.
Then it goes two places Sabi does not yet. Workflows start on their own when a form is submitted, an email arrives from a specific sender, a meeting ends or a Monday morning arrives. And the agents you build are shared across a team, each person on their own connected accounts.
One founder or a team
This is the clearest line between them, and Sabi draws it itself. Its FAQ says team use is “just you for now,” with seats and shared workspaces on the roadmap.
Carly is team-shaped from the start. Michael runs a six-person consultancy. One Carly agent triages the shared sales inbox, books discovery calls with the first consultant who is free, and updates the CRM. Each consultant also has Carly in their own inbox and calendar. One setup, seven mailboxes, and every reply goes out under the right person’s name.
Texts or triggers
Sabi’s unit of work is the text you send. That is its whole design, and for a founder who runs the day from iMessage it is the point.
Carly’s unit of work is the event. Emily’s website form fires at 11pm. Carly enriches the lead, creates the HubSpot record, drafts the intro from Emily’s address and offers three times from her calendar. She reads the summary over coffee. Nobody texted anything, and the lead got an answer eight hours before the office opened.
Both can be told what to do. Only one starts without being told.
Pricing
Sabi retails at $295 a month for one user, no metered cap, month to month. A founding-member offer takes $200 a month off for the first six months while the window is open, and the site says public pricing will be higher after it closes. Free starter credits let you try it without a card.
Carly runs Zapier-style workflows free. AI agents start at $35 a month. Get started here.
Which should you choose?
- One founder who wants an assistant in a text thread with playbooks pre-loaded: Sabi
- Inbox, calendar and follow-up across all of your accounts, sent as you: Carly
- Work that starts on its own when something happens: Carly workflows
- One assistant shared by a team: Carly agents
- A business phone line answered and dialed for you: Carly Phone, book a call to scope it
The wider field, including Lindy, Alfred, Orchid, Howie and Catch, is in Sabi alternatives, and the product itself is explained in Sabi AI.
FAQ
Is Sabi cheaper than Carly?
No. Sabi retails at $295 a month for one user. Carly’s AI agents start at $35 a month, and Zapier-style workflows are free. Get started.
Can I text Carly like I text Sabi?
Yes. Carly works over text and email as well as the web, and you can add the Carly plugin to ChatGPT or the Carly connector to Claude. The difference is that Carly also works when nobody texts it, through workflows.
Does Sabi work with Outlook?
Yes. Sabi added a second Outlook inbox in mid-September. Carly connects Google and Microsoft accounts side by side and works across all of them at once.
Which one is safer with my data?
Both say they do not train on your data and both send under your own address. Carly’s connections are scoped to the services you turn on and can be revoked one by one, and its workflows run through official app connections rather than a browser, so nothing trips a site’s bot defences.
Ready to automate your busywork?
Carly schedules, researches, and briefs you—so you can focus on what matters.
See what people say
"Before Carly, I relied on a Calendly link, but the whole process felt impersonal and not very professional. Carly changed that by handling all the back-and-forth, so I'm no longer stuck in endless email threads trying to line up schedules.
Now Carly reaches out to candidates, shares my real-time availability, lets them pick a slot, then sends a Zoom link and drops it straight into my calendar. She sends reminders to both of us before each call, which has significantly reduced no-shows and last-minute confusion.
On top of scheduling, Carly acts like a full executive assistant, sending me my schedule the night before so I can prepare for each call. It reminds me of the old x.ai assistant, but Carly is noticeably smarter, faster, and better suited to my healthcare recruitment business."
