Muse vs Instinct: Two AI Assistants, and Only One You Can Actually Use

Muse vs Instinct is the head-to-head everyone in the agentic assistant space is asking about, and the first honest answer is that it is not yet a fair fight. Meta's Muse is live in the US today. Instinct launched as a private access group with a waitlist, has no published price, and its site no longer makes clear who can get in. Both promise an assistant that acts rather than answers, both connect to your accounts to do it, and neither takes notes on your conversations. Here is what each one actually is, and what to read in Instinct's terms before you connect your email.

	Muse	Instinct
Made by	Meta	Spear Street Technology
Can you use it today	Yes, rolling out in the US	Unclear. It was a private access group with a waitlist in September; the site now says "Text Instinct to get started!"
What it is	App and web, iOS and Android, glasses promised	Cloud service you text or call
Price	Meta: free for most needs, paid plans above that. No figures published	Not published
Audio	Meta has published nothing either way	Collected when you enable it, per its privacy policy
Model training on your data	Not published	On by default, with an opt-out and carve-outs
Takes notes on conversations	No	No

You Cannot Actually Choose Between These Yet

Worth stating before anything else, because a lot of coverage puts them side by side as though you could pick one this afternoon.

Meta says Muse "is rolling out in the US on iOS, Android, and muse.ai, and coming soon to AI glasses". So it exists, today, if you are American.

Instinct's own site says: "Instinct is currently available to a private access group as we're scaling up compute. You can join the waitlist here or ask an existing member to invite you." So for most readers the practical comparison is Muse against nothing. That wording was unchanged when we re-checked on 15 September 2026. When we checked again on 5 October 2026 it was gone from the homepage, which now shows a "Text Instinct to get started!" button leading to a sign-in page. Instinct has not said whether that means access is open to everyone, so treat availability as unconfirmed until you have tried to sign in yourself.

That has not stopped Instinct attracting serious money, though the reporting does not agree with itself. Outlets covering the same round on the same day in August 2026 put it at either $250 million or $350 million, both at a reported $2.5 billion valuation. Instinct has confirmed no figure, so treat the number as unsettled. What it tells you is that investors expect it to matter, not that you can use it.

What Each One Claims to Do

Muse. Meta calls it "a secure, private personal AI agent that proactively helps people meet their goals and suggests ideas", and its headline capability is that it can "open a browser, fill out forms, and negotiate on their behalf". It runs inside an isolated environment Meta calls the Muse Secure VM, powered by a model called Muse Spark.

Instinct. Its site describes "a personal assistant that understands what you're working on and what's important to you", and the mechanism is unusual: "It's trained to use a phone and a computer" and "uses its devices in the same way that humans do". You interact by text or phone call rather than through an app.

Instinct's own examples are the more concrete of the two: "following up on threads you've dropped, proactively calling or texting you, arranging a ride to the airport, booking a handyman for your apartment". That is a clear picture of the job. Muse's framing is broader and vaguer, which may simply reflect a bigger company being careful.

Instinct publishes no list of named integrations. "Your applications and devices" is as specific as it gets, which makes it hard to know in advance whether it reaches the tools you actually use.

Neither of Them Takes Notes

If you arrived from the AI recorder or memory pendant world, this is the section that matters.

Neither product claims to transcribe conversations, produce meeting notes, or give you a readable record of what was said. Muse has memory in the sense of a preference profile: Meta says it "remembers what matters to a person, so it can make suggestions unprompted", and you can tell it to forget things. Instinct ingests information about what you are working on in order to act, not to hand you a document.

That is not a criticism. They are task assistants, and the job of reducing your admin is a real job. But the word memory is doing different work in that sentence than it does when a recorder says it. An agent that remembers you prefer aisle seats is not going to tell you what your manager committed to on Tuesday.

We wrote about Muse on its own terms in What Is Meta's Muse?, and about which tools genuinely produce a record in ADHD Tool That Turns Conversations Into To-Dos.

Audio Is Where They Genuinely Differ

This is the one hard, documentable difference between them, and it runs in a direction that may surprise you.

Instinct explicitly collects audio. Its homepage says it "connects to your applications and devices - email, messaging, screen, audio, location, and more", and its privacy policy states that "The Services may also collect audio and voice data, should you choose to enable these features". So audio is opt-in, but it is a stated capability, alongside your screen and your location.

Be precise about what that means, though. Instinct publishes no recording or transcription feature. "Should you choose to enable these features" is an unspecified permission rather than a described product, and you can also phone the assistant, which is a different thing from it recording you. What those features actually are is not published.

Meta has published nothing about audio for Muse. Not that it listens, not that it does not. The announcement and the security material simply never mention microphones or recording.

We are reporting that gap as a gap. Silence is not a privacy guarantee, and it is not an accusation either. It may become a live question when Muse reaches AI glasses, which have microphones by design.

One more gap worth naming: Instinct lists "screen" among the surfaces it connects to on its homepage, but screen or screenshot capture does not appear anywhere in its privacy policy. That is an inconsistency between the marketing and the legal document, and it is a fair thing to ask them about.

What Instinct's Terms Actually Say

A correction, stated plainly. When this article was first published on 11 September 2026 it described Instinct's terms as granting a "perpetual and irrevocable" licence over user materials. We re-checked the live document on 15 September and that language is not in it. We have removed the quotation. We cannot tell from outside whether the document was revised or whether we captured an out-of-date version, because Instinct publishes no changelog and the document has carried the same "Last Updated: August 26, 2026" stamp throughout. Either way, the wording we quoted is not what a reader clicking through would find, so it should not have run.

Here is what the live terms say instead. On ownership: "The Company does not claim any ownership in your Materials." On use: "You agree that we may use Materials to develop, provide, maintain and improve the Services and our other products and services, including training AI models, and for any purpose specified in our Privacy Notice, subject to your opt-out rights and Vault materials as outlined below."

So training on your data is on by default, with two protections. There is a Vault: "for Materials that you add to our feature of the Service known as the 'Vault' ... we will only use such Materials to provide the Services to you and will not use such Materials to train AI models." And there is a general opt-out at app.instinct.com/settings.

The part worth reading carefully is what survives that opt-out. Instinct's privacy policy states: "Even if you opt out, we may still use your information for AI model training when that information is flagged for safety review", and "We may still use AI models previously trained, fine-tuned or improved on your information prior to your opting out". It also notes the opt-out "applies on a go-forward basis and applies only to model training and not, for clarity, other types of improvements".

None of that is unusual for this kind of product, and it is more user-friendly than the language we previously reported. It is still worth understanding before you connect an account, because the whole value proposition requires handing over a lot, and an opt-out that does not reach models already trained is a narrower promise than it first sounds.

TechCrunch has also reported that a tester found that after disconnecting Instinct's access, their emails remained stored in plain text for later searches. That is third-party reporting rather than something Instinct publishes, and we flag it as such, but it is the kind of detail worth asking about directly.

Neither company publishes a retention period. Not Meta for Muse, not Instinct.

What They Cost

Neither has a price list you can rely on.

Meta's only published statement is that Muse "is free for most of what people need, with subscription plans for people who want to do more". TechCrunch and Axios have both reported paid tiers at $20 and $100 a month. That reporting is consistent, but it is not a Meta price list and we are not presenting it as one.

Instinct publishes no price at all. Not a figure, not a tier, not a currency, and there is no pricing page on its site. Third-party coverage suggests it is free during the private access period, which is a normal thing to do while scaling compute and tells you nothing about what it will cost later.

So on cost, the honest position is that Muse has a free tier you can try today, and Instinct's pricing is genuinely unknown.

Which One to Try

Try Muse if you are in the US and curious. It is available, Meta says the useful tier costs nothing, and an agent that can drive a browser and fill in forms removes real work. The security thinking Meta has published, particularly around prompt injection, suggests they have taken the hard part seriously.

Try signing in to Instinct if the phone-and-computer approach appeals, and read the terms and privacy policy properly before you connect any accounts. Its examples are more concrete and its interaction model, texting or calling an assistant, is genuinely different from opening an app.

Do not pick between them on privacy yet. Instinct tells you it can collect audio and trains on your data by default with an opt-out. Meta tells you almost nothing about audio at all. One of those is more disclosed, not necessarily more protective.

Where Neither Helps

Both are built to reduce what you have to do. Neither is built to tell you what happened.

If the thing failing in your week is that people tell you things and they disappear, an agent that books your handyman does not touch it. That is a different product category, and no amount of agentic capability substitutes for a record.

Legend One is built for that failure. It is a voice-first AI memory pendant made for people with ADHD, worn at chest height with three microphones and speaker separation, always on with no button. It is not a medical device and does not treat ADHD. It turns your conversations into text across more than 150 languages, with no audio to play back and none kept in your account. If your pendant is away from your phone, audio is held on the pendant until it syncs, then deleted. A Halo light shows when it is active. It is $499 USD including the first year of membership, renewing at $499 a year, which is $1,497 over three years, with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

And the corresponding honesty: Legend will not book anything, fill in a form, or chase a thread you dropped. If your problem is admin volume rather than lost information, one of these agents is the right tool and a pendant is not.

The Takeaway

One ships, one does not, and neither is a notebook.

Use Muse if you are American and want to try an agent today at no cost. Wait on Instinct until access opens and the pricing exists, then read the training opt-out and its carve-outs before connecting accounts. Assume neither gives you a record, because neither claims to, and the marketing use of the word memory obscures that. Ask both about retention, because neither publishes a period, and with an agent holding your email, messages and screen that is the question that matters most.

FAQ

Is Instinct better than Muse? You cannot meaningfully compare them yet. Muse is rolling out in the US today with a free tier. Instinct started as a private access group with a waitlist, publishes no price, and as of 5 October 2026 its site no longer says who can sign up. Instinct's described jobs are more concrete, but availability decides this for now.

Do Muse or Instinct take notes on your conversations? Neither claims to. Both are task assistants that act on your behalf. Muse has a preference profile it calls memory, which is not a transcript, and Instinct ingests context in order to act rather than to produce a document you read back.

Does Instinct record audio? Its privacy policy states that the services "may also collect audio and voice data, should you choose to enable these features", and its homepage lists audio among the things it connects to. So it is opt-in but explicitly supported. What those features are is not published, and Instinct describes no recording or transcription product. Meta has published nothing about audio for Muse in either direction.

Does Instinct train AI models on your data? Yes, by default. Its terms say materials may be used "including training AI models", with an opt-out at app.instinct.com/settings and a Vault feature whose contents are excluded from training. Its privacy policy notes the opt-out does not cover information flagged for safety review, and does not undo training that already happened.

What do Muse and Instinct cost? Meta says Muse is free for most needs with paid plans above that, without publishing figures; outlets have reported $20 and $100 a month tiers. Instinct publishes no price at all.

Sources: Meta Newsroom, Introducing Muse; Meta Research, Security and safety for AI agents; Instinct, including its privacy policy and terms, both re-verified 15 September 2026; TechCrunch on Instinct privacy. Muse pricing and Instinct funding figures come from press reporting and are not confirmed by either company. Quotations are from each company's own pages. Prices are USD. This article was corrected on 15 September 2026; see the terms section.