Duckbill vs Instinct
The two most opposite products here. Instinct is a model acting autonomously; Duckbill is a model that plans and a background-checked human who executes.
Side by side
| Duckbill | Instinct | |
|---|---|---|
| Channels | SMS, Email, Web | iMessage |
| How you start | Create an account | Invite only |
| Who starts it | Only when asked | Acts without asking |
| Pricing | Not published | Not published |
| Can do | Bookings and reservations, Web research, Task management, Phone calls, Handoff to a human, Calls people for you | Email, Calendar and scheduling, Bookings and reservations, Travel, Task management, Web research, Phone calls, Persistent memory |
| Trains on your conversations | Not stated | Policy not reviewed |
| Status | Live | Live |
| Company | Not published | Spear Street Technology |
Rows where the two agree are dimmed. Every figure comes from the product’s own public pages, checked 2026-09-06.
What actually differs
Duckbill's line is "AI breaks it down. Humans pick it up." The model decomposes the task and people carry it out, over text, email or the app: refunds, disputes, cancellations, hold queues, appointments, negotiations. Instinct connects to your apps and accounts and does the work itself, over text and calls.
This is the live test of a failure class. Magic, Fin, GoButler and Facebook M all attempted the human-concierge model and abandoned it on unit economics. Duckbill is the one product here running it again with cheaper planning underneath, which makes it economically the most interesting listing in the directory regardless of whether it works.
Instinct is the opposite bet and currently the better funded one, at $350 million raised. Its published weakness is that it acts before asking, which is precisely the failure a human executor cannot make in the same way. Duckbill's privacy policy was last updated on 4 December 2024 and does not address whether conversations train models; Instinct publishes no policy we could find at all.
Duckbill is for
Anyone who wants the last mile done by someone accountable.
Instinct is for
Anyone who wants throughput and will supervise the output.
There is no winner here on purpose. These are different products for different situations, and the paragraph above names the question that tells you which you are in. See all nine providers compared or answer five questions to narrow it yourself.