Pally
Pally is a personal assistant that lives in your text messages, on iMessage or RCS, with no app and no account. It connects to your email, chats, calendar, files and the web, then drafts, books, buys and follows up.
What is Pally?
Pally is a personal assistant you reach the way you reach a friend: by text. It lives in iMessage on iPhone, iPad and Mac, and in RCS on Android through Google Messages. There is no app to download, no account to create and no dashboard to learn. You text a number, and the work happens in the thread.
Behind that thread sits a wide set of connections: iMessage, WhatsApp, Gmail, Outlook, iCloud, Google Calendar, Docs, Sheets and Drive, Notion, Linear, Slack, GitHub, Jira, Confluence, Todoist, Splitwise, Instacart, Granola, X and the live web. LinkedIn and Apple Notes go through an optional Mac companion app you install yourself. Pally keeps a persistent memory of people, plans, preferences and details, and brings them back at the right moment, alongside a private contact book built from your conversations and connected accounts.
It also acts. On the web it works inside a secure browser session where you log in yourself, so Pally never sees or stores passwords or one-time codes. Purchases go through a single-use virtual card capped at the amount you approved. Anything that leaves your own perimeter, a message to someone else, a purchase, an invitation, is shown to you word for word and only happens once you agree.
Day to day it sends a morning brief, flags the messages that matter in your connected apps and runs custom automations such as text me when my landlord emails: three on Free, ten on Pro, unlimited on Max. Two users' Pallys can talk to each other to arrange something together. Pally can join a group chat, follow the plan and post a weekly update. On Max it gets a dedicated phone number, its own email address and the ability to place outbound calls, and an optional Cloud Mac add-on gives it a hosted Mac permanently connected to iMessage.
The intelligence comes from Anthropic, with OpenAI for real-time voice, transcription and embeddings, and open-source models through OpenRouter for light triage. Pally Technologies, Inc. is a Delaware company operating from San Francisco, founded in 2024 and part of Y Combinator's Summer 2025 batch, shipping daily against a public changelog.
What it does
- Triage your inbox and draft the replies that actually matter
- Catch you up on what you missed across WhatsApp, iMessage and Slack
- Chase the people who never answered
- Book flights, hotels and restaurants, then handle the check-in
- Buy online with your approval, paying with a single-use virtual card
- Turn a kickoff conversation into Linear tickets and a Slack summary
- Place real outbound phone calls on the Max plan
When to use Pally / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Pally is the right fit.
When to use Pally
- Overloaded professionals juggling several inboxes and messaging apps on iPhone, iPad, Mac or Android who want one place to keep track of everything
- Founders, account executives, product leads and ops managers who need briefs, follow-ups and reminders handled without opening another tool
- Freelancers and independent practitioners, from designers to solicitors, whose personal and professional admin lands in the same day
- Parents and household organizers keeping up with birthdays, appointments, bookings, shopping and shared expenses
- People who want the leverage of an executive assistant without hiring one, which is exactly how the Max plan is positioned
When not to use Pally
- Anyone under 18: both the terms of service and the privacy policy set a strict 18-year minimum
- Companies and teams: the terms forbid multi-user, organizational or enterprise use without written permission from the publisher
- Developers who want to build on top of it: there is no public API and no developer documentation, and using it to build or train a competing product is prohibited
- People looking for professional advice: Pally is explicitly not a lawyer, a doctor, a financial adviser or an emergency service
- Users who expect it to move money or read everything: bank access is read-only, so no transfers and no bill payments, and password-protected notes stay unreadable
How to use Pally
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Tap any Text Pally button on the website and say hi from the messaging app you already use
- Let Pally introduce itself and answer the few questions it asks to get to know you
- Connect WhatsApp first, the connection Pally recommends because it unlocks the most
- Follow Pally to the Linked devices screen in WhatsApp and enter the pairing code it sends you
- Connect your other apps through OAuth, brokered by Composio, and disconnect any of them whenever you want
- On Android, check that RCS chats are switched on in Google Messages
- Install the optional Mac companion app if you want LinkedIn, Apple Notes, screen control or coding tasks
- Call the number you text when you would rather speak, entering the PIN that verifies your identity first
- Upgrade your plan directly in the chat, with no signup form to fill in anywhere
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Nothing to install and no account to create: it runs in the messaging app you already use, on iPhone, iPad, Mac or Android
- A genuine, permanent free plan running on the same underlying models as the paid tiers
- Explicit confirmation before any irreversible action or anything visible to a third party
- Purchases capped by a single-use virtual card, and bank access deliberately limited to read-only
- AI vendors do not train their models on Pally data, and the subprocessor list is published in detail with purpose, data processed and region
- Encryption in transit and at rest with strict per-user isolation, plus privacy controls you can trigger in plain language in the chat
- Very broad integration coverage, including LinkedIn and Apple Notes through a local companion app, with a public changelog shipping daily
Cons
- No public API and no developer documentation, so no room for a developer integration
- Enterprise and multi-user use is contractually forbidden without written permission from the publisher
- No security certification claimed (no SOC 2, no ISO 27001, no HIPAA) and no customer DPA published or offered
- US-only hosting, with no European data residency option and no EU representative under Article 27 of the GDPR
- No documented opt-out from model training; the publisher relies on its statement that no training takes place
- A very small and very young publisher (two people listed on its Y Combinator profile), reachable only by email, with no contact page or form and no official social account linked from the site
- The most advanced features (LinkedIn, Apple Notes, screen control, coding tasks) require a Mac and a companion app, and the service is restricted to adults over 18
Pricing & Plans
Pally offers a permanent free plan rather than a time-limited trial. Paid access starts at 25.00 USD per month for the Pro plan, or 250 USD per year, and goes up to 200 USD per month, or 2,000 USD per year, for Max; both annual options are presented as two months free. Conversation is unlimited on every plan, subject to reasonable use, and all plans run on the same underlying models: paying widens the scope of what Pally can reach, it does not buy a smarter assistant. Automations and searches are subject to monthly quotas, and Pally warns you when a quota is reached. Payments are processed by Stripe, subscriptions renew automatically unless cancelled, and refunds are at the publisher's discretion. An optional Cloud Mac add-on is billed separately on a monthly basis, at a price that is not published.
- unlimited conversation
- 3 connected apps of your choice from iMessage
- Gmail
- Outlook
- Slack
- Google Calendar
- Granola
- everything in Free
- plus every app connected (iMessage
- Slack
- calendar
- meetings
- documents)
- everything in Pro
- plus a dedicated phone number for calling your Pally
- outbound calls placed by Pally
- its own email address for correspondence
- unlimited automations
- priority processing and early access to new features
- positioned as a replacement for an executive assistant
- a separate monthly subscription
- price not published
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Pally handles your data.
GDPR overview
GDPR implementation is explicit and documented. The privacy policy, updated on 11 August 2026, covers the EU GDPR, the UK GDPR and California's CCPA/CPRA. It lists the full set of GDPR rights: access (Art. 15), rectification (16), erasure (17), restriction (18), portability (20), objection (21), withdrawal of consent and automated decision-making (22), plus the CCPA/CPRA rights to know, delete, correct, opt out of sale or sharing, limit sensitive data use and not be discriminated against. Rights are exercised through privacy@pally.com after reasonable identity verification, and many controls work straight from the conversation: ask what Pally remembers, tell it to forget, disconnect an app. International transfers rely on standard contractual clauses, vendor DPAs and technical and organizational measures. The company is US-based and data may be processed there. No Article 27 EU representative is named on the site.
Who owns the data?
The terms are explicit: the content you send to or receive from Pally remains yours. You grant Pally only the limited rights it needs to process and deliver that content in order to operate the service. The service itself, its software, models, trademarks and interfaces belong exclusively to Pally Technologies, Inc. Isolation is strict per tenant, so one user's data is never exposed to another, and the private contact book Pally builds is never shared. Two things never reach Pally's servers at all: your LinkedIn session, which stays in your Mac keychain, and your Apple Notes, read on demand and never copied.
Reuse rights
Because the content stays yours, you can reuse it freely; the licence you grant Pally is limited to running the service. Pally processes your messages and the data in your connected accounts for one declared purpose, understanding and carrying out your requests. The stated GDPR legal bases are contract (Art. 6(1)(b)), legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) for service reliability, security, fraud prevention and aggregate usage analysis, consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) for optional diagnostics, product communications, each individual app connection and location sharing, and legal obligations (Art. 6(1)(c)). Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Connected accounts are queried on demand rather than bulk-copied, and WhatsApp runs on a dedicated per-user server. The website uses first-party analytics plus Google Analytics, with no advertising trackers. The publisher states it does not sell or share data with advertisers, and content arriving from outside your own world is treated as information to read, never as instructions to act on.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Hosting and cloud infrastructure run on Amazon Web Services in a US region, and Pally Technologies, Inc. is a US company, so data may be processed in the United States. Everything is encrypted in transit and at rest, with strict per-tenant isolation. WhatsApp data sits on a dedicated per-user server, likewise encrypted in transit and at rest, and the Cloud Mac add-on runs as dedicated macOS instances operated by Pally on AWS. Some things never leave your own machine: the LinkedIn session and its history stay on your Mac, in the keychain and a local cache, and Apple Notes are read on demand on the Mac with nothing copied to Pally's servers. Bank access tokens are held in an encrypted secret vault, outside the main database. Duffel, used for flight booking, operates in the UK and the US; every other subprocessor sits in a US region. Transfers from the EU and the UK are covered by standard contractual clauses. There is no European data residency option.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Pally.
- Handing your inbox, your chats and your reminders to a single thread can dull the habit of keeping track yourself, and that reflex has to come back if the service or the plan ever goes away
- The scope you hand over is intimate and wide: Pally reads the messages and inboxes you connect, and the contact book it builds aggregates names, birthdays, relationship notes and summaries of your interactions
- Group chats expose the personal data of third parties who never consented to any of it
- Automations and scheduled sending remove the case-by-case confirmation, and from that point the responsibility for what goes out is yours
- The AI can be inaccurate, incomplete or out of date; the terms explicitly ask you to verify anything important before relying on it
- The Cloud Mac add-on requires entering your Apple ID on a page operated by Pally, and Mac screen control means granting recording and accessibility permissions
- No independent security certification backs the privacy claims, arbitration is mandatory under Delaware law with a class action waiver, liability is capped at $50 or 12 months of fees, and custom MCP integrations are governed by their operator's terms rather than Pally's
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Setup is about as light as it gets: you text a number. No account, no installation, no dashboard, and onboarding happens entirely in the conversation. Connecting apps takes a few taps through OAuth, brokered by Composio; WhatsApp additionally needs a pairing code entered from its Linked devices screen, and Android users need RCS chats switched on in Google Messages. Advanced features (LinkedIn, Apple Notes, Mac screen control, coding tasks) require installing the Mac companion app and granting permissions, and Cloud Mac needs an Apple ID sign-in approved from your iPhone. No technical skill is needed for everyday use.
Deployment
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Pally
Fundraising
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement Pally.
Frequently asked questions
What is Pally?
Do I need an iPhone to use Pally?
Is there an app to install?
Is Pally free?
What can Pally connect to?
Can Pally act on my behalf?
Is my data used to train AI models?
Where is my data hosted?
How do I delete my data?
Can I use Pally at my company?
Should you pick Pally?
Pally makes one unusual bet: the message thread is the whole interface. No app, no dashboard, no account, just iMessage or RCS, and from there a genuinely wide field of action, from inbox triage to online purchases, travel booking and, on the Max plan, real phone calls. The guardrails are stated plainly: anything visible to a third party is shown word for word before it happens, purchases run on a single-use virtual card capped at the amount you approved, and bank access is read-only. The transparency is unusual too, with a detailed subprocessor list and an explicit commitment that no AI vendor trains on your data.
The reservations are just as concrete. The publisher is young and very small, two people on its Y Combinator profile, with no security certification, no customer DPA and hosting exclusively in the United States, which means no European residency option and no Article 27 representative. Business use is contractually closed without written permission, there is no public API, and the service is restricted to adults. The counterweight is a fast shipping cadence and a public changelog updated daily.
Who is it for? Someone who wants to hand over a broad slice of personal and professional admin, accepts that a single assistant reads their inboxes and chats, and is happy working in a thread rather than in a product. The Free plan is permanent and runs the same models as the paid tiers, so the honest way to judge it is to connect three apps and see whether it actually takes work off your plate. Anyone carrying company data, answering to a compliance function or bound by a European data residency requirement should read the terms of service before going any further.
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