Vellum AI Alternatives: 8 Personal Assistants Compared
Vellum’s personal assistant is built around memory. You hatch it, name it, give it a personality, and it keeps a running wiki of your life: the people, the projects, the fact that your co-founder spells her name with one N. It is open source under the MIT license, runs on a Mac, in Vellum Cloud, or on your own hardware, and Vellum says it has raised $25 million from backers including Y Combinator, Dharmesh Shah and Arash Ferdowsi.
People start looking elsewhere for four reasons: a credit meter that also spends while you are not chatting, one Google connection when work runs on several accounts, the upkeep of self-hosting, and an assistant inbox that only arrives on the $100 plan.
Came here for Vellum’s older LLM development platform (prompt evals, workflows for AI engineers)? That is a different product; see our Stack AI alternatives roundup, which covers it.
The quick answer: Carly is the best Vellum alternative for work. Memory is table stakes now. What pays off is an assistant that starts when an email lands or a form comes in, holds several Google and Microsoft accounts at once, and lands the result in the calendar, CRM and files where it belongs. Carly connects to thousands of apps. Free Zapier-style workflows; AI agents from $35/month. Connect your inbox here. If you want a self-hosted companion that learns your personal life, Letta Agent or OpenClaw are the closer swaps.
Quick comparison
| Tool | Best for | Work email and calendar | Starts on its own | Hosting | Entry price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carly | Work across accounts and apps | Several Google and Microsoft accounts | Yes, on events | Managed cloud | Free workflows; agents from $35/mo |
| ChatGPT | Memory plus general chat | Gmail and Outlook connectors | Schedules; Gmail, Slack, GitHub events | Managed cloud | Free; Plus $20/mo |
| Letta Agent | Learning agents for technical users | Not the focus | Scheduled tasks | Local or cloud | Free with your own keys; Pro $20/mo |
| OpenClaw | DIY agent in your messaging apps | Whatever you wire up | You configure it | Self-hosted | Free software plus model bills |
| Town | One ambient work assistant | Gmail and Outlook | Routines | Managed cloud | Free; Starter $15/mo |
| Littlebird | Context from your screen | Email and calendar connections | Routines | Desktop app | Free; Plus $17/mo annual |
| Poke | Texting an assistant | Gmail and Outlook | Background automations | Managed cloud | Free; Pro $19/mo |
| Pally | Personal messages and errands | Gmail, Outlook, iCloud | Automations and watches | Managed cloud | Free; Pro $25/mo |
| Vellum (for reference) | Memory-first personal AI | One Google connection; Outlook | Hourly heartbeat, schedules | Cloud or self-hosted | Free; Mighty $30/mo |
Why people look past Vellum
The meter runs in the background. Credits pay for inference, web search and image generation, at $1 per credit. Pro packages (Mighty $30, Super $100, Ultra $200 a month) bundle some monthly usage that does not roll over, then top-ups are pay-as-you-go. Vellum’s own pricing docs list a heartbeat agent and memory work among the background actions that spend credits, and say the company is “actively working on making background spend more visible and easier to control.” An independent pricing breakdown from eesel counted 15 credit-spending actions, 12 of them in the background, and quoted one user: “I think cost is the downside for vellum, it has everything else going for it.”
One Google account at a time. Vellum’s integration docs describe a single Google connection covering Gmail, Calendar and Drive. A GitHub request to hold a work and a personal Google account side by side, filed because connecting a second account overwrote the first, was closed as not planned in March 2026.
Self-hosting is real work. Vellum’s local-hosting docs are candid: a local assistant only runs while your computer is awake, so scheduled tasks do not fire when it sleeps, and the native mode available today is the “least isolated” option, with Docker and Apple Container isolation still listed as coming soon. Cloud fixes both, at the subscription price.
The assistant’s own inbox costs extra. An assistant email address and subdomain start on the $100 Super plan. The $30 Mighty plan does not include them.
1. Carly
Vellum learns who you are. Carly does the work that shows up while you are busy being that person. A client emails asking to move Thursday: the calendar gets checked across every account, the meeting moves, the note lands in HubSpot, and the confirmation goes out. Nobody opened a chat window, and your laptop can be shut, because workflows run in the cloud and start on events: an email landing, a form coming in, a meeting ending.
It holds the accounts work actually runs on. Connect several Gmail and Outlook accounts at once, shared mailboxes included. Each action reports which account it came from, so the personal calendar and the two work inboxes stay distinct. That is the exact spot where a single Google connection stops, and we compared the field on it in assistants that work with Gmail and Outlook.
It carries work onward. “Reply, book it, log it in the CRM, open the task and file the attachment” is one instruction, because Carly connects to thousands of apps: Google Calendar, Salesforce, Asana, QuickBooks, Slack, Notion, Google Drive and the rest of your stack. Meeting notes from Fathom, Fireflies, Granola or tl;dv become follow-ups without you copying anything.
Memory is there, per agent. Build custom agents with their own name, email identity, permissions, files and memory, so the scheduling agent and the billing agent each remember their own clients. Delegate by email, SMS, Slack or dashboard chat, or use the Carly connector inside ChatGPT and Claude.
Scheduling is included. Booking pages and group scheduling are free, with unlimited connected calendars.
Control without babysitting. Set approval steps before anything sends. Customer data, including Google and Microsoft data, is never used to train AI models.
Best for: anyone whose assistant should run business email, calendar and follow-through across several accounts without being asked
Pricing: Free Zapier-style workflows; AI agents from $35/month, priced per account rather than per seat
Limitations: Carly works inside the inbox and calendar you already use, so keep the client you like. A managed Workspace or Microsoft tenant may need administrator approval before accounts connect.
2. ChatGPT
The default for most people who want an assistant that remembers them. ChatGPT carries memory across chats, connects to Gmail and Outlook, and its Scheduled Tasks can now start from a Gmail message, a Slack message, or GitHub pull request activity.
Best for: one assistant for thinking, writing and light inbox work
Pricing: Free; Plus $20/month
Limitations: Event triggers stop at those three apps, so a CRM stage change or an intake form never starts a task. A thread on OpenAI’s developer forum, active through early September 2026, reports Gmail and Drive showing as connected in Settings but unavailable when a conversation tries to use them.
3. Letta Agent
From the team behind MemGPT at UC Berkeley’s Sky Computing Lab, Letta Agent is the closest match to Vellum’s memory obsession. Agents keep their context in git-tracked memory, learn during idle time, run scheduled tasks, and talk to you over Slack, Discord or Telegram.
Best for: technical users who want persistent, self-improving agents on their own model keys
Pricing: Free with your own API keys (limited to three stateful agents); Pro $20/month with a usage quota and pay-as-you-go overage
Limitations: Built for people comfortable with CLIs, keys and model plans. Letta’s own docs estimate a few hours of daily coding use at about $100 a month or more, and power users past $200.
4. OpenClaw
The open-source agent that made “personal AI that lives in your messaging apps” a category. Free to run and model-agnostic, it is the swap for anyone who picked Vellum for self-hosting and wants maximum control. Our explainer on what OpenClaw is covers the setup.
Best for: developers who want to own every part of the stack
Pricing: Free software; you pay your model provider directly
Limitations: Nothing caps the model bill for you, so a busy month can cost more than a hosted plan. Exposed instances and security patches are your job, which is why people shop for OpenClaw alternatives.
5. Town
A managed work assistant. Every user gets a Townie with its own @town.com address that learns from email, calendar and documents, then runs briefings and custom routines across its integrations, on Gmail and Outlook.
Best for: one ambient assistant with little setup
Pricing: Free with 30 chat messages a month; Starter $15/month with 1,250 credits; Pro $49/user/month billed annually with 5,000 credits
Limitations: Chats and routines spend credits, with pay-as-you-go overage on Pro and above. One generalist assistant is the structure, so separate roles do not get separate identities. More in Town alternatives.
6. Littlebird
A desktop assistant that builds context from your screen, apps and meetings, then answers questions and runs routines from what it has seen.
Best for: knowledge workers who want recall of everything they looked at
Pricing: Free Basic with daily credits; Plus $17/month billed annually or $20 monthly; Power $42/month billed annually
Limitations: Its context comes from your machine, so it is strongest when you are at the laptop, and chats and routines draw on usage credits. See Littlebird alternatives.
7. Poke
The assistant you text over iMessage, SMS, WhatsApp or Telegram. Connect Gmail or Outlook and it handles email, calendar and background automations from a chat thread. Cognition, the maker of Devin, acquired Poke’s parent company in July 2026.
Best for: quick personal delegation by text
Pricing: Free; Pro $19/month; Ultra $199/month with pay-as-you-go usage past its credits
Limitations: Built for your own life rather than client-facing work, and the acquisition leaves its long-term roadmap open. Compare Poke alternatives.
8. Pally
A text-based personal assistant on iMessage and RCS that pulls together messages, email, calendars and tasks, prepares a morning brief, watches conversations, and can run errands with approval.
Best for: personal context and daily-life logistics
Pricing: Free; Pro $25/month or $250/year; Max $100/month or $1,000/year, with optional prepaid credits in $20 increments
Limitations: Its depth points at personal communication and errands, not a work stack of CRM, projects and billing. See Pally alternatives.
Which Vellum alternative fits you
- Work email and calendar across several accounts, acting on events: Carly
- A memory-first agent you run yourself: Letta Agent, or Hermes Agent if you want another MIT-licensed option
- Full self-hosted control and you accept the model bill: OpenClaw
- One assistant for chat, writing and light inbox help: ChatGPT
- An ambient work assistant with minimal setup: Town
- Recall of everything on your screen: Littlebird
- Delegating by text for personal life: Poke or Pally
FAQ
What is Vellum AI? Vellum is an open-source personal AI assistant that you name and shape, with long-term memory, available on Mac, iOS, Android, the web, Slack, Telegram and email. The same company previously sold an LLM development platform for AI engineers, which our Stack AI alternatives page covers. For an assistant that runs work email across accounts, Carly is the closer fit.
How much does Vellum cost? The Base plan is free with pay-as-you-go credits at $1 each. Pro packages are Mighty at $30/month, Super at $100 and Ultra at $200, each with a monthly usage allowance that does not roll over, and a Custom plan starts at $50. Self-hosting has no platform fee, but you still pay for models. Carly’s pricing is simpler to read: free Zapier-style workflows; AI agents from $35/month.
Is Vellum open source? Yes. The assistant is published on GitHub under the MIT license, and you can run it locally or on your own server. Keep in mind that a local assistant pauses whenever your computer sleeps, while Carly runs in the cloud with the laptop shut.
Can Vellum connect more than one Gmail account? Its docs describe a single Google connection, and a GitHub request for multiple Google accounts was closed as not planned in March 2026. Carly holds several Gmail and Outlook accounts at once, shared mailboxes included, and names the account behind every action.
What is the best free Vellum alternative? ChatGPT, Town, Littlebird, Poke and Pally all have free plans, Letta Agent is free with your own API keys, and OpenClaw is free software. Carly’s Zapier-style workflows are free, with AI agents from $35/month when you want the AI side.
Does Vellum train on my data? Vellum says conversation history, memory and credentials are never used to train models. Carly makes the same commitment for customer data, including Google and Microsoft data, spelled out on its privacy page.
Which Vellum alternative is best for a small business? Carly, because each agent can have its own name, inbox, permissions and memory, and the work lands in the CRM, calendar and files your team already uses. If you want to see it on your own stack first, book a call with the Carly team.
More: Best AI personal assistants · Meta Muse alternatives · Town alternatives · OpenClaw alternatives
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