Comparison
Orion vs Instinct
Side by side
Everything in the Instinct column is taken from their own public pages as of October 2026. Products change; check theirs before you decide. Where they publish nothing about something, this says so rather than guessing.
| Orion | Instinct | |
|---|---|---|
| One daily brief across every source | Yes — one page at 6am, synthesized from email, calendar, finance, health, code and notes | Not published — check their site |
| Two-way SMS (text it, it answers and acts) | Yes — US numbers, opt-in, verified by code, reply STOP to end | Not published — check their site |
| Personal wiki with unified memory | Yes — pages for people, projects and topics that grow every night from your calendar and email, woven into every brief. You can read, edit and undo all of it | Not published — check their site |
| Semantic search over your own history | Yes — across every past brief, wiki page and message, by meaning | Not published — check their site |
| Health and fitness data in the brief | Yes — Oura, Garmin, Withings, Strava: sleep, readiness, HRV, activity | Not published — check their site |
| Finance in the brief | Yes — Plaid, YNAB, Splitwise: balances, budget, unusual activity | Not published — check their site |
| Developer sources | Yes — GitHub and Linear: what moved, what is blocked on you | Not published — check their site |
| Pricing | $20 a month, or $192 a year — one plan, everything included, with a 14-day free trial | Not published — check their site |
| Compliance certifications | None yet, stated plainly on the security page. AES-256-GCM encrypted tokens, TLS, per-user isolation in the database | Not published — check their site |
| Asks before it acts | Yes — anything that leaves your account waits for your OK, on the web or by texting back a code. Every change is logged with an Undo | Its terms appoint it "as your agent to enter into agreements, commitments or transactions on your behalf", binding "as if entered into directly by you" |
| Your data used to train AI | No — never used to train general AI models, never sold, never used for advertising | Yes, unless you opt out in settings — its terms allow your materials to be used for "training AI models", and models trained before you opt out are kept |
| Books, buys and calls for you | No — Orion finds products on Shopify stores and hands you a checkout link. It does not book travel, pay, or phone businesses | Yes — its site lists ordering groceries and ingredients, booking a train and sending flowers |
| Where you reach it | Web app with push notifications, two-way SMS on US numbers, and the brief by email. No WhatsApp, voice or native app yet | Text or call it |
| Setup | Sign in with Google and click through the connections you want | Not published — check their site |
When Instinct is the better choice
If you want an assistant that orders groceries, books a train or sends flowers without you lifting a finger, and you are happy for it to act as your agent, Instinct does that and Orion does not. You can also call it on the phone.
What Orion is for
One person's whole life in one place: email, calendar, finances, health, side projects and notes, read overnight and synthesized into a single morning brief. You can text it a question and it answers from your actual data — and it acts, drafting the reply, booking the event, closing the task. It is not a team workspace, and it is not trying to become one.
The details are on the homepage, and how it handles your data is on the security page. Orion is in private beta; join the waitlist and you are let in roughly in order.