AI Agent You Can Text: Complete Guide to 18 Best Picks

An AI agent you can text is the newest way to hand software your errands. You do not download an app or learn a dashboard. You save a contact in your phone, send it a message, and it books the table, chases the reply or adds the school trip to your calendar. On Saturday 3 October TechCrunch published a list of 18 of these services, from general assistants to agents built for families, travel and work.

The timing is not an accident. Instinct, the best known of the new AI agents, has just raised $1 billion at a $10 billion valuation, and it talks to its users over SMS. Poke became the first AI agent approved for Apple’s Messages for Business platform in June and was bought by Cognition a month later. A directory called the Agent Store now lists 144 agents that live in iMessage.

This guide goes through every AI agent you can text on TechCrunch’s list: what each one does, where you can reach it, what it costs and who is backing it. We checked each claim against the company’s own website, and several details in the original list need correcting. We also look at the privacy questions, and at what a texting assistant means for a business whose staff connect it to work email.

Table of contents

What an AI Agent You Can Text Actually Does
The Full List: Every AI Agent You Can Text at a Glance
General-Purpose Picks for an AI Agent You Can Text
Newer Contenders: Caddy, folk, Iris, Pally, Tomo and Fo
A Family AI Agent You Can Text: Fambot, Ohai, Ollie and Orbits
Specialist Picks: An AI Agent You Can Text for Travel, Work or Content
What Each AI Agent You Can Text Costs
Who Is Funding the AI Agent You Can Text Boom
Where TechCrunch’s List Needs Correcting
Privacy Questions to Ask Any AI Agent You Can Text
What an AI Agent You Can Text Means for Businesses
How to Choose an AI Agent You Can Text
Frequently Asked Questions
References

What an AI Agent You Can Text Actually Does

Strip away the branding and the products share one design. A chat interface sits on top of connectors to your email, calendar and other apps, a memory of what you have said before, and permission to act. Under the hood each one is a natural language processing system wired to those connectors.

No app, just a contact

The defining feature of an AI agent you can text is that the interface is a phone number. Poke’s sign-up is a phone number and nothing else. Caddy texts iPhone users with blue bubbles through iMessage and Android users through RCS. That lowers the barrier for people who would never install a command-line agent such as OpenClaw, which is exactly the audience these companies want.

Memory, connectors and actions

Texting alone would make these chatbots. What turns them into agents is the ability to act. Most connect to Gmail or Outlook and to a calendar, remember context across weeks, and then do things: set reminders, send emails, place calls, make purchases. Instinct, Wajo’s Fo and Ollie go further and use their own phone numbers, email addresses or cloud browsers so that they can deal with businesses directly.

Why messaging, and why now

Three things have lined up. Apple opened Messages for Business to Poke, the first stand-alone AI agent it approved, on 4 June. Infrastructure firms such as Linq, which says it powers Poke, Tomo and Lindy, sell iMessage and SMS access as a service. And according to Poke’s co-founder, Apple’s per-user cost is far lower than Meta’s WhatsApp fees, which rose after EU rules forced Meta to admit third-party AI agents.

The Full List: Every AI Agent You Can Text at a Glance

The table below summarises all 18 services. Prices are the cheapest paid plan billed monthly, taken from each company’s pricing page where one exists. Where a price comes only from TechCrunch, we say so.

Agent	Best for	Where you text it	Entry price
Caddy	Turning messages into tasks	iMessage, RCS	Free in public beta
Fambot	School emails and family plans	SMS plus app and web	Free in beta
folk	Habits and accountability	iMessage, Telegram	Free; Pro $9.99
Instinct	Errands with its own email and phone	SMS and voice	Invite-only
Iris	Repeatable work tasks	iMessage	Free; Plus $19
Martin	Calls, inbox and calendar	SMS, WhatsApp, phone, Slack	Basic $35
Miso	Flights with a human team	iMessage	Not published
Ohai	Household admin	Text, email, voice	Free; Premium $9.99
Ollie	Privacy-first family help	Text and group chats	Free; Everyday $25
Orbits	Chores and home services	Text plus app	Not published
Pally	Loose threads across apps	Text	Free; $25 (per TechCrunch)
Poke	General help with personality	iMessage, SMS, Telegram, WhatsApp	Free; Pro $19
Rene	Shared plans in group chats	iMessage, Telegram, WhatsApp	Free to start
Skye	Briefings on the home screen	iPhone widgets	Private testing
Stanley	Social media content	iMessage, Telegram, web	Not published
Tomo	Goals and group chats	iMessage	$19.99 (per TechCrunch)
Town	Work email and meetings	iPhone app; WhatsApp inbound only	Not published
Wajo (Fo)	Calls, bookings and payments	Text, calls, email	Free tiers; Pro on request

Two of the 18 stretch the definition. Skye is a set of home-screen widgets rather than a chat, and Town’s WhatsApp and Telegram links only take messages in. Every other entry is an AI agent you can text in the plain sense.

General-Purpose Picks for an AI Agent You Can Text

These four are the broadest assistants on the list, and between them they show the range of business models: a free tier with paid upgrades, an invite-only service with billion-dollar backing, and a subscription product that predates the current wave.

Poke: the first AI agent you can text on Apple Messages for Business

Poke comes from The Interaction Company of California in Palo Alto and launched publicly in March 2026. It works over iMessage, SMS, Telegram and, in some markets, WhatsApp. In June Apple approved it as the first stand-alone AI agent on Messages for Business, after Poke showed it could offer live support and label itself clearly as AI. By then it had relayed about 100 million messages. Poke’s own site lists a free plan, Pro at $19 a month and Ultra at $199 a month.

Poke after the Cognition deal

In July the coding start-up Cognition, which makes Devin, bought The Interaction Company in a deal TechCrunch put in the “low nine figures”. Co-founder Marvin von Hagen said Poke had been expensive to run despite hundreds of thousands of users. Cognition says nothing changes for Poke users before the end of the year. That makes Poke the one AI agent you can text that already has a big-company parent, which cuts both ways for long-term buyers. We covered its April launch in our Poke AI agent report.

Instinct: the most valuable AI agent you can text

Instinct, founded by Noah Shinn, opened as an invite-only service in August 2026. It raised $350 million at a $2.5 billion valuation that month, then a $1 billion Series C at $10 billion on 28 September from investors including Sequoia, Benchmark and Coatue, as we reported in our story on the Instinct Series C. It talks to users over SMS and voice and still has no mobile app.

Instinct’s own phone, email and computer

Instinct works through its own phone number and its own computer. In September every user got an Instinct email address, so the agent can sign up for services and contact businesses without filling the user’s inbox. It has partnered with 1Password for logins and Stripe for payments, and it now places phone calls, a feature Meta’s Muse added in the same week, as our report on AI agent calling explains.

Martin: the veteran that answers the phone

Martin is reachable by SMS, phone call, WhatsApp, email, Slack and its own iOS app. It manages calendars, email, reminders, tasks and notes, sends messages and makes calls for you, and sends a daily summary. Reviews on its site date back to March 2024, which makes it one of the older products here. TechCrunch quotes a starting price of $21 a month, but Martin’s pricing page shows that figure is the Basic plan billed yearly. Paid monthly, Basic costs $35 and Pro costs $49, the highest entry price for any AI agent you can text on this list.

Rene: the AI agent you can text with friends

Rene, from New York’s Second Enlightenment, calls itself “the best contact in your phone”. It works in iMessage, Telegram and WhatsApp, turns conversations into tasks and reminders, and can browse the web, write code, shop, and make slides and images. Its pitch is multiplayer: one Rene can sit in a group chat and coordinate plans between several people. It is free to start. Our coverage of the multiplayer AI agent launch has the details.

Newer Contenders: Caddy, folk, Iris, Pally, Tomo and Fo

The next six are younger and narrower. Most launched in 2026, most have a free tier, and each AI agent you can text in this group tries to stand out with one idea, from a private cloud computer to an agent that carries its own payment card.

Caddy: an AI agent you can text that watches your apps

Caddy lives in iMessage on iPhone and RCS on Android, so there is no separate inbox to check. It connects to your calendars and conversations, spots things that need action, such as an appointment buried in an email, and adds events, sets reminders, tracks follow-ups and does research. Caddy has been in public beta since April 2026 and is free to start.

folk: a friend in your texts with its own computer

folk, built by Nozomio Labs, describes itself as “the friend in your texts that keeps you on track”. It checks in on gym days, keeps habit streaks, logs meals from a photo and chases refunds for forgotten subscriptions. Each user gets an isolated cloud computer that can browse, run code and connect apps. It works in iMessage and Telegram, with WhatsApp rolling out by region. The free tier needs no card. Pro costs $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year, the $8.33 TechCrunch quotes.

Iris: built on the open-source Hermes agent

Iris runs on Hermes, the open-source agent from Nous Research, which is MIT-licensed and has about 250,000 stars on GitHub. You text it in iMessage, connect your apps and hand over a task, and it works through the steps in the background. Its pitch is that it turns how you work into reusable skills, which makes it the clearest example of an AI agent you can text built on open-source software. The free plan includes iMessage access, all connections and persistent memory. Plus costs $19 a month and adds higher limits, longer tasks and scheduled skills.

Pally: one thread for everything

Pally pulls in WhatsApp, Gmail, Outlook, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Slack, Notion, Linear and more, and answers questions such as “what am I forgetting?” Its site promises that it “never does anything big without asking first”. TechCrunch reports a free plan with 15 minutes of calls a month and paid plans at $25 a month for 30 minutes and $100 for 60 minutes. Pally does not publish those prices on its homepage, so treat them as TechCrunch’s figures.

Tomo: an AI agent you can text into a group chat

Tomo calls itself “the personal AI that lives in your texts”. It learns your goals and tries to keep you accountable, and it handles reminders, web searches, calendars, email, videos and photo edits. Its main difference is that it can join a group conversation in iMessage rather than staying a private assistant. TechCrunch puts the basic plan at $19.99 a month. Linq lists Tomo as one of the agents running on its messaging infrastructure.

Fo: Wajo’s AI agent you can text, with its own card

Wajo’s Fo calls businesses, sends emails, joins group chats and makes bookings and purchases. It has its own email address, phone number and payment card, so you do not hand over your own logins, and a human assistant steps in when Fo gets stuck. TechCrunch says Fo launched in September 2025, but Wajo opened its alpha on 25 August 2026 and launched publicly on 28 September 2026. Our reports on Wajo and on Fo’s free tiers cover the launch.

A Family AI Agent You Can Text: Fambot, Ohai, Ollie and Orbits

Four entries target households, each an AI agent you can text about school runs, meals and chores. They all promise to turn school emails, calendars and group chats into one plan, so the real differences are in the channel, the connectors, the price and how they treat your data.

Family agent	How you reach it	Connects to	Price	Funding
Fambot	SMS, iOS, Android, web	Gmail, Google Calendar, WhatsApp groups	Free in beta	$3.5m pre-seed
Ohai	Text, forwarded email, voice	Calendars, lists, meals	Free; from $9.99	Not disclosed
Ollie	Text and family group chat	Email, calendar via delegated access	Free; $25; $100	$7.5m seed
Orbits	Text plus app	Calendars, lists, service providers	Not published	$2.6m pre-seed

Fambot: an AI chief of staff for parents

Fambot was founded by CEO David Reich, a former Uber Transit head, CTO Greg Karlin, formerly of Instagram, and Jason Morrow, formerly of Google and LinkedIn. It launched in beta in early September after testing with more than 1,000 families. Every night it texts a summary of the next day, and parents reply to change plans. It connects to Gmail and Google Calendar today. Fambot has $3.5 million in pre-seed funding co-led by NextView Ventures and Baukunst, and expects to charge about the price of Netflix.

Ohai: a household manager called O

Ohai’s assistant is called O. You text it, forward it emails or speak to it, and it turns those requests into schedules, reminders, meal plans and chores across the family. The free tier covers reminders, meal planning and lists. Premium plans start at $9.99 a month and add shared household calendars and family task coordination, with prices that rise with family size.

Ollie: the privacy-first AI agent you can text

Ollie, run by San Diego’s Confabulation Corporation, launched in June 2026 and has raised a $7.5 million seed round, mostly from Khosla Ventures. It never asks for passwords: email and calendar connect through delegated access, and when Ollie must log in to a website it uses its own cloud browser and sends you a link to the session. It says your data is never sold or used to train AI models. The free plan gives 50 messages a month. Everyday costs $25 for 150 messages and Always-On costs $100 for 1,000.

Orbits: help that reaches outside the house

Orbits works through its app and over text. It brings together calendars, lists and conversations, and it searches the web, makes purchases, books restaurants, changes appointments and requests quotes from plumbers and other household services. It can also remind family members about chores. Backers include the a16z Speedrun fund, N49P and Garage Capital. Its press page lists a $2.6 million pre-seed round, while a BetaKit headline on the same page puts it at $2 million US dollars.

Specialist Picks: An AI Agent You Can Text for Travel, Work or Content

The last four apply the idea to one job: travel, work, social media and the iPhone home screen. Two of them combine software with people or apps rather than relying on texting alone.

Miso: an AI agent you can text to book flights

Miso is a premium travel concierge that runs inside iMessage. It pairs AI trip planning with a dedicated human travel team that learns your preferences, loyalty status and points. It handles itineraries, seat selection and last-minute changes around the clock through direct airline integrations. Miso calls itself “the world’s first travel agent approved by Apple”. That is a narrower claim than Poke’s, which Apple approved as the first general AI agent on Messages for Business. Miso does not publish its prices.

Town: a Townie for work

Town gives each user a “Townie”, an assistant that learns how they work across email, calendars, Slack and documents. It raised a $55 million Series A on 3 June, led by Andreessen Horowitz with Forerunner, First Round Capital, Alt Capital and Conviction. Town is the least text-native product on the list. Its website says its WhatsApp and Telegram links are inbound-only, so your Townie cannot send or read messages there on your behalf. It works mainly through email, calendars, Slack and an iPhone app.

Stanley: an AI head of content

Stanley is aimed at creators rather than personal admin. Through iMessage, Telegram and the web it suggests post ideas, turns voice notes into scripts and captions, and fills a content calendar. It is the only AI agent you can text on the list aimed squarely at creators. It can connect to your Instagram account and use what you have actually been doing to propose new posts, then schedule them and check back when they land.

Skye: an agentic home screen

Skye, from New York’s Signull Labs, is not a chat at all. It is an “agentic homescreen” for the iPhone that uses widgets to surface briefings, meeting preparation, reminders and alerts such as suspicious bank charges. SEC filings show more than $3.58 million in pre-seed funding in a round that closed in September 2025, and PitchBook lists a $19.5 million post-money valuation. Backers include a16z, True Ventures and SV Angel. Skye entered private testing in April and has no public release date.

What Each AI Agent You Can Text Costs

Most of these services are free to try, so the useful comparison is the cheapest paid plan. The chart shows that the entry price for an AI agent you can text ranges from about $10 to $35 a month when billed monthly. Bar widths are each price divided by Martin’s $35, the highest on the list.

Cheapest paid plan, billed monthly (US$)

Martin Basic $35

Ollie Everyday $25

Pally, per TechCrunch $25

Tomo, per TechCrunch $19.99

Poke Pro $19

Iris Plus $19

folk Pro $9.99

Ohai Premium $9.99

Read the billing period

Two prices in TechCrunch’s list are annual rates shown per month. folk’s $8.33 is its $99.99 yearly plan divided by 12, and Martin’s $21 is its Basic plan billed yearly. Before you subscribe to an AI agent you can text, check whether the headline price commits you to a year.

Usage caps change the maths

Several plans meter usage rather than features. Ollie’s Everyday plan includes 150 messages a month, with top-ups at $0.30 a message. folk gives free users phone calls of 10 minutes a week and Pro users 120 minutes a month. Pally’s tiers, according to TechCrunch, are priced by minutes of calls. A heavy user can pay well above the entry price.

The premium tier

At the top end, Poke Ultra costs $199 a month, and Ollie Always-On, folk Max and Pally’s top plan each cost $100. The economics explain why. These agents run frontier models on every request, and Poke’s co-founder admitted it was expensive to operate, a theme we examined in the ugly economics of consumer AI.

Who Is Funding the AI Agent You Can Text Boom

Investors are betting heavily on the category, but the money is concentrated. Instinct’s two rounds in five weeks total $1.35 billion, which is 24.5 times Town’s $55 million, the next largest disclosed figure. The chart leaves Instinct out so the other bars are visible, and widths are each round divided by Town’s $55 million.

Disclosed funding excluding Instinct (US$ million)

Town Series A 55

Poke seed plus extension 25

Ollie seed 7.5

Skye pre-seed 3.58

Fambot pre-seed 3.5

Orbits pre-seed 2.6

Valuations tell the same story

Poke was valued at $300 million after its $10 million extension in April. Instinct is now valued at $10 billion, more than 33 times that figure, despite having no app and no published user numbers. Skye’s PitchBook valuation is $19.5 million. Investors are paying for the chance that one AI agent you can text becomes the default contact for millions of people.

Big platforms are the real competition

Start-ups are not the only players. Meta’s Muse reached the top of the US app stores with many of Instinct’s features plus access to Instagram and Facebook. OpenAI and Google are building agents into their own apps. DoorDash has launched an AI agent you can text to order food. An independent AI agent you can text has to be good enough that people choose it over the assistant already on their phone.

Where TechCrunch's List Needs Correcting

The TechCrunch roundup is a useful map, but we found six details that differ from what the companies themselves publish. None changes the overall picture. Each matters if you are choosing an AI agent you can text on price or trust.

Agent	TechCrunch’s list says	The primary source says
Fo (Wajo)	Launched publicly in September 2025	Alpha 25 August 2026; public launch 28 September 2026
folk	Pro is $8.33 a month	$9.99 monthly; $8.33 only on the $99.99 yearly plan
Martin	Starts at $21 a month	$21 is Basic billed yearly; $35 billed monthly
Ollie	Achieved SOC 2 compliance	SOC 2 Type 1, a point-in-time design review
Skye	About $3.6m in seed funding	More than $3.58m in pre-seed funding (SEC filing)
Town	Works with Slack and other platforms	WhatsApp and Telegram are inbound-only

Why SOC 2 Type 1 is not Type 2

A SOC 2 Type 1 report checks that a company’s controls are designed properly on one date. A Type 2 report tests whether those controls actually worked over a period, typically three to twelve months. Ollie’s Type 1 is a real step and more than most rivals show. But a business buyer should ask any AI agent you can text for a Type 2 report before connecting work accounts.

Why the Fo date matters

A September 2025 launch would make Fo one of the oldest agents on the list. In fact it is less than a week old. Anyone judging the track record of an AI agent you can text should know that most of these services, Fo included, have months of public history at most.

Privacy Questions to Ask Any AI Agent You Can Text

Every AI agent you can text needs deep access to be useful: your email, your calendar, often your contacts and sometimes your payment details. That is the trade at the centre of the category, and the companies handle it very differently.

The agent is the other end of the chat

Encryption protects a message on its way between two ends. With an AI agent you can text, the agent’s servers are the other end. iMessage encryption does not stop the agent’s provider reading what you send, and SMS is not end-to-end encrypted at all. Read the privacy policy as if you were emailing the company directly, because in effect you are.

Check the terms of service

TechCrunch reported that Instinct’s first privacy policy granted it a “perpetual and irrevocable” licence to use and modify users’ materials, including to train its AI models. Instinct has since updated the policy. Ollie and folk both state that they do not train on user data. That line belongs in the policy itself, not only in marketing copy.

Passwords, delegated access and payment cards

Approaches to logins vary widely. Ollie uses delegated access and never stores passwords. Instinct uses a 1Password integration. Wajo gives Fo its own card and asks for approval before it pays, as the “$89 callout approved before Fo booked it” example on its site shows. Prefer an agent that asks before spending money, and never send card numbers or passwords in a text thread.

Reliability is a risk too

These products are young. In TechCrunch’s own testing, Instinct quoted wrong hotel rates and Ollie stopped responding during an outage at its text provider. Meta’s Muse sent a YouTuber’s home address to a stranger, as we reported in our story on the Muse address leak. Start with low-stakes tasks before trusting any AI agent you can text with anything you cannot undo.

What an AI Agent You Can Text Means for Businesses

Most of these services are sold to consumers, but they reach into work. A parent who connects Ollie to a work calendar, or a manager who forwards client emails to Martin, has moved company data into a start-up’s systems without anyone in IT knowing.

Staff will connect work accounts

Connecting an AI agent you can text to a work account usually happens through an OAuth consent screen for Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. Both platforms let administrators restrict which third-party apps users may approve. If your policy on AI assistants does not mention texting agents yet, it should, and our AI strategy and IT governance teams can help set those rules.

Agents will contact your business

Instinct now emails businesses from its own address, and Fo and Martin place phone calls. Your front desk will increasingly talk to software acting for a customer. Decide how staff should verify an agent’s authority before changing a booking, issuing a refund or sharing personal data, and make sure your cybersecurity training covers it.

Your customers may want to text you

Apple’s Messages for Business, the channel Poke now uses, is available to registered businesses through an approved messaging provider. DoorDash’s text ordering shows the customer-facing version of the same idea. For a service business, an AI agent you can text, run under your own brand and with your own controls, may become a normal support channel.

How to Choose an AI Agent You Can Text

Choosing an AI agent you can text comes down to four checks. Most of these services offer a free tier, so you can test before you pay.

Match the channel to your phone

If you are on Android, look for RCS, SMS, WhatsApp or Telegram support: Caddy, Poke, Martin and Rene qualify. iMessage-only products such as Iris, Miso and Tomo need an iPhone. Families with mixed devices should test that every member can join the group chat.

Pick by job, not by hype

For family logistics, compare Fambot, Ohai, Ollie and Orbits. For work email and meetings, look at Town or Martin. For errands that need calls and payments, Instinct and Fo are the most capable. For accountability and habits, folk is built for exactly that.

Test with a reversible task

Ask it to summarise tomorrow, draft a reply or find three restaurant options before you let it book or buy anything. Watch whether it asks for confirmation. The best AI agent you can text is one that checks with you before it acts on anything that costs money.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an AI agent you can text?

It is an AI assistant that you reach through iMessage, SMS, RCS, WhatsApp or Telegram instead of an app. It connects to your email and calendar, remembers context, and carries out tasks such as reminders, bookings and purchases.

Which AI agent you can text is free?

Caddy and Fambot are free during their betas, and Poke, folk, Iris, Ollie, Ohai, Rene and Pally all have free tiers. Paid plans generally start at $9.99 to $35 a month.

Is it safe to give an AI agent you can text my email?

It depends on the company. Prefer services that use delegated access instead of passwords, state that they do not train on your data, and ask before spending money. Check for a SOC 2 Type 2 report if you connect work accounts.

Does an AI agent you can text work on Android?

Some do. Caddy uses RCS on Android, Poke and Martin work over SMS, and Rene, folk and Stanley support Telegram. iMessage-only services such as Iris, Miso and Tomo need an iPhone.

Which is the biggest AI agent you can text?

By funding, Instinct, which is valued at $10 billion after a $1 billion Series C in September. By disclosed usage, Poke, which had relayed about 100 million messages by June and was bought by Cognition in July.