Ostler: $49.99 + $24.99/mo – $24.99/mo replaces $87/mo of cloud AI subscriptions (ChatGPT + Claude + Copilot + Otter.ai + Notion AI). Half the price of Perplexity. Fully local. Your data never leaves your Mac.
Ostler is the only AI assistant that actually knows your life – because nothing else has every face, every message, every meeting, every email loaded in, all kept on your Mac, all private to you. Every other product in this table does one slice of that: a chatbot, a memory layer, a wearable, a screen recorder, a search box. This page is the honest comparison. Eleven competitors. One runs on your hardware.
| Ostler | Kin AI | HeyDitto | Google Gemini | Apple Intelligence | Obsidian | Perplexity PC | Poke | Omi | Rewind | MyClaw | Zo Computer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Data location | Your Mac | Phone storage; cloud for AI | HeyDitto cloud | Google cloud | Your device | Your device | Perplexity cloud | Poke cloud | Omi cloud | Meta (sunsetting) | MyClaw cloud | Zo cloud |
| Runs on the Mac you already have | Yes – any Apple Silicon Mac, laptop or desktop | Phone app | Phone or web | Web only | iOS 18+ / macOS 26 only | Any Mac or PC | Requires dedicated Mac Mini purchase | iMessage, no local install | Requires Omi wearable purchase | Dedicated device (sunsetting) | Requires MyClaw appliance | Requires dedicated Zo device |
| Privacy model | Architectural (no server) | "Local-first" marketing; cloud-proxy reality | Cloud policy (employees can access) | Ad-funded surveillance | On-device | Local-first | Cloud policy | Cloud policy | Cloud policy | Meta-owned | Isolated container | Cloud policy |
| Price | $49.99 + $24.99/mo | Freemium; $20–44/mo paid | Not public | "Free" (you are the product) | Included with Apple devices | Free / $50/yr | $50/mo | $10/mo+ | $89 + sub | Free (sunsetting) | $199–1,599/yr | Free–$200/mo |
| Relationship intelligence | Yes (warmth, reciprocity, history) | Advisor archetypes only | Memory of people you mention | No (implicit only) | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| Personal wiki | Auto-generated, 21 page types | No | No | No | No | Manual notes | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| Instant onboarding | 7 macOS sources | No (chat-only) | No (chat-only) | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| GDPR import | 20 platforms | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| Conversation capture | Meeting + messaging | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | Wearable mic only | Screen recording | No | No |
| Web search | Yes (local via SearXNG) | No | No | Yes (core feature) | Via Siri | No | Yes (core feature) | Yes (cloud) | No | No | Via browser control | Yes (cloud) |
| AI assistant | iMessage, WhatsApp, email | Multi-advisor chat | Conversational chat | Gemini | Siri | No (plugins) | Chat interface | iMessage | Via app | Search only | Multi-channel | Chat interface |
| Works offline | Yes | No (cloud AI) | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| Knowledge graph | Yes (vectors + RDF) | Memory system, not graph | Yes (their headline feature) | No (user-facing) | No | Manual backlinks | No | No | No | No | No | No |
Every competitor does one thing well. Kin AI runs advisor avatars on your phone but routes every AI request through its cloud proxy. HeyDitto remembers people you mention but its own privacy policy admits employees can access user data. Perplexity does web search. Poke does iMessage. Omi does conversation capture. Obsidian does notes. Rewind did screen recording (now sunsetting). MyClaw does workflow automation. Zo hosts a cloud computer. Google’s Gemini reads your screen and sends it to human reviewers. OpenAI’s Codex auto-captures your screen for $100/mo and is blocked in the EU. Apple processes on-device but does not build a knowledge graph. None of them build a knowledge graph of your relationships and life history from 20 platforms of imported data, run entirely on your hardware, with no cloud dependency. That is what Ostler does.
Each page goes deeper on a specific competitor: what they do well, where they fall short, and why you might choose one over the other.
Apple is expected to ship deeper personal-context AI at WWDC 2026 in June. That is good news. It is also the clearest signal that the category Ostler sits in – an AI assistant that knows your life, kept on your device – is real and about to go mainstream.
Ostler is already there, with four differences Apple is unlikely to close at v1:
More sources. Ostler pulls from twenty GDPR exports in addition to the seven Apple-native sources Apple Intelligence can reach. Your LinkedIn history, your WhatsApp archives, your old Gmail, your Facebook messages – none of which Apple can see.
Relationship intelligence. Warmth, reciprocity, conversation history, “you haven’t spoken to your mum in three weeks”. That is a product decision, not a platform capability. Apple is unlikely to ship a feature that tells you who you are drifting from.
Lives in your existing messages. Marvin answers on iMessage, WhatsApp, and email – wherever you already are. No new app to open, no new habit to build.
On your Mac. Not in Apple’s cloud. Apple Intelligence routes harder queries to Private Cloud Compute – Apple’s servers, engineered to be private but still off your device. Ostler stays on your hardware, full stop.
Apple’s announcement will be the proof the category is real. Ostler is already there.
If you want a general-purpose AI assistant and do not care about privacy, Perplexity or MyClaw will give you more powerful cloud models. If you want to capture live conversations with a wearable device, Omi does that. If you want a chatbot in iMessage, Poke charges $10/mo. If you want structured note-taking, Obsidian is excellent and free. If you want a cloud computer, Zo does that.
If you want your entire digital life – 20 years of messages, emails, social media, and contacts – organised into a searchable knowledge graph that runs on your Mac with no cloud dependency, and an AI assistant that actually knows your relationships, that is Ostler. No other product in this table does that.