Chorus vs Town
Town (town.com) is a personal AI assistant for work that gives each user a "Townie" with its own @town.com email address. It learns your voice, relationships, and priorities from your connected tools, then triages email, drafts replies, manages your calendar, preps meetings, and runs scheduled routines with approval gates you control. Founded by ex-Dropbox/Plaid and ex-Google AI leaders, it raised a $55M Series A led by a16z (with Forerunner) in June 2026, when it also launched out of beta.
Chorus is a platform for hiring AI employees — autonomous AI agents that each run on their own always-on computer, connect to 70+ tools, and handle real work end to end. Here’s how the two compare, honestly.
At a glance
| Comparison dimension | Chorus | Town |
|---|---|---|
| Always-on computer | Every agent runs on its own dedicated always-on machine (4 vCPU / 8 GB) with a real browser — it keeps working when your laptop is closed. | No — the Townie is a hosted service on Town's cloud (Convex/AWS, US-hosted) that monitors accounts and runs routines in the background, but there is no dedicated per-user VM or real browser it can log into arbitrary sites with. |
| Tool integrations | 70+ integrations out of the box — Gmail, Slack, Notion, GitHub, Linear, Stripe, and more. The agent handles the auth. | 52 integrations across 9 categories — email (Gmail, Outlook), calendars, meetings, Slack, CRMs (HubSpot, Salesforce, Attio), project tools (Linear, Notion, Asana, Jira), file storage, data, development, and finance (QuickBooks, Brex) — plus the option to connect custom tools via MCP servers. |
| Messaging channels | Web chat, iMessage/SMS, Slack, WhatsApp, and Telegram — and it messages you proactively when work is done. | Dedicated @town.com email address, web, iOS app, desktop app, Slack, Telegram, and WhatsApp (two-way chat with your Townie); iMessage is listed as "coming soon"; no SMS. |
| Persistent memory | Persistent memory and files live on the agent's own disk, so it remembers last week's work. | Yes — accumulated context is the core product: it learns your voice, relationships, and preferences from connected tools and retains them across sessions. |
| Background automations | Scheduled jobs (crons) and background automations are built in — agents work while you're away. | Routines are central: stock routines (morning briefings, auto inbox triage, meeting briefings, newsletter digests, person research) plus custom routines you describe in plain language and set on triggers or schedules — 2 custom routines on Starter, unlimited on Pro and up. |
| Pricing | Free plan to start (no card). Pro $20/mo for one always-on agent; Max $200/mo; extra agents $50/mo. | Free (30 chats/mo); Starter $15/mo billed monthly (1,250 credits); Pro $49/mo (5,000 credits), Power $99/mo (12,000 credits), Power Plus $199/mo (40,000 credits) at annual billing; overages $0.030-$0.044/credit on Pro+; Team/Business/Enterprise pool credits across seats. |
Where Town shines
- Email-native delegation done right: your Townie has its own @town.com address, so you and external contacts can CC or forward work to it exactly like a human executive assistant.
- Near-zero setup — it learns your writing voice, clients, and priorities from your existing email and work history on day one instead of requiring configuration or prompt-writing.
- Careful autonomy controls: approval mode, read-only mode, and per-tool autonomy settings — it never sends emails or calendar invites without approval unless you explicitly grant it.
- Strong routine system: stock routines (morning briefings, auto inbox triage, meeting briefings, newsletter digests, person research) plus custom routines you describe in plain language, 52 integrations spanning Gmail, Outlook, Slack, calendars, CRMs, and project tools, and the ability to connect custom tools via MCP servers.
- Credible, well-funded operation: $55M a16z-led Series A, founders from Dropbox/Plaid and Google AI, SOC 2 Type 2 compliance, and multi-provider model routing (Anthropic primary, plus OpenAI, Gemini, Bedrock, OpenRouter).
Where it falls short
- No dedicated computer per assistant — Townies run as a hosted service on Town's shared infrastructure (Convex/AWS), with no per-user VM and no real browser it can log into arbitrary websites with, so work is bounded by its integration catalog and any MCP servers you connect.
- Scope is knowledge-work admin — email, scheduling, meeting prep, CRM updates — rather than open-ended execution like running code, operating web apps that have no API, or producing files and media.
- No iMessage or SMS today: iMessage is listed as "coming soon," so messaging surfaces are its email address, web, iOS, desktop, Slack, Telegram, and WhatsApp.
- The free tier (30 chats/month) is a preview rather than a usable daily plan, and the credit model means costs climb with usage via pay-as-you-go overages on Pro and up.
- Cloud-only and closed: your email and calendar data live in Town's US-hosted infrastructure with no self-hosting option, and individual plans cover one person with a single Townie rather than multiple specialized assistants.
Choose Town if…
- Your main pain is email and calendar volume: you want an assistant that triages your inbox, drafts replies in your voice, and preps every meeting automatically.
- You want colleagues, clients, and recruiters to interact with your assistant directly via its own email address, like a human EA.
- You want minimal setup on top of ~50 mainstream work integrations (Gmail, Outlook, Slack, HubSpot, Salesforce, Linear, Notion), with plain-language custom routines and MCP connections when you need something extra.
- You need conservative, approval-gated autonomy and enterprise trust signals (SOC 2 Type 2, well-funded vendor) before letting AI touch your work email.
Choose Chorus if…
- Your tasks need a real computer: logging into websites that have no API, browsing with a real Chromium browser, running code, or working with files on the agent's own disk.
- You want to reach your agent over iMessage/SMS — Town's iMessage is still "coming soon" and it has no SMS — and have it proactively message you when background work finishes.
- You want multiple specialized AI employees (e.g., a researcher, an ops agent, a coding agent) rather than one personal assistant — Chorus Max includes 3 agents, extras at $50/mo.
- You want to choose specific frontier models per task (Claude Opus 4.8, GPT-5.6, Grok 4.5, Gemini 3.1 Pro) and generate images, rather than relying on the vendor's internal model routing.
Common questions
Is Town better than Chorus?
They solve different problems. Town is an email-native executive assistant that learns your writing style and excels at inbox triage, scheduling, and meeting prep through 50+ integrations (plus custom MCP connections) with careful approval gates. Chorus gives each agent its own always-on cloud computer with a real browser and code execution, so it suits open-ended, multi-step work beyond API integrations — pick Town for inbox mastery, Chorus for general-purpose AI employees.
How much does Town cost in 2026?
Town has a free tier limited to 30 chats per month, then credit-metered paid plans: Starter at $15/mo billed monthly (1,250 credits), Pro at $49/mo (5,000 credits), Power at $99/mo (12,000 credits), and Power Plus at $199/mo (40,000 credits), with Pro and above priced at annual billing. Pro and up add pay-as-you-go overages of $0.030-$0.044 per credit, and Team/Business/Enterprise plans pool credits across seats.
What can Town's AI assistant actually do on its own?
By default Town never sends emails or calendar invites without your approval — you choose autonomy per tool across approval, read-only, and autonomous settings. Its routines run in the background on Town's infrastructure: morning briefings, automatic inbox triage, meeting briefings, person research, and custom scheduled workflows you describe in plain language across tools like Gmail, Slack, and your CRM.