Agentic Index
Carson vs Shortwave (2026)
Both put an agent where your work already happens, at 5 and 6 of 14. That verdict is the Agentic Index coverage score, graded from each vendor's own published materials.
Shortwave is an AI native email client for Gmail and Google Workspace whose assistant plans and runs multi step work across inbox, calendar and connected apps, with a free plan. Carson is a desktop agent that generates task specific workspaces and runs natural language automations across email, Slack and calendar, with runtime level permission enforcement so it only takes actions you allow, at early access. Shortwave owns the inbox; Carson works across the desktop with a harder permission boundary.
This comparison is published by Agentic Index, an independent agentic AI vendor research platform. Carson and Shortwave are each graded against the same 14 capability Agentic Index taxonomy, from the vendor's own public materials under the Agentic Index verification standard, alongside 969 researched vendors. No vendor pays for placement and no vendor has reviewed this page. How this evidence is graded
Choose Carson if
- Slack alongside email and calendar is where your work actually spreads.
- Runtime permission enforcement is the control that makes you comfortable with a desktop agent.
- Task specific workspaces generated on demand is a genuinely different way to work.
Choose Shortwave if
- Documented coverage is broader and email is where your day is lost.
- A free plan and a working client mean you can switch this week.
- Gmail and Google Workspace is your stack and a native client beats an overlay.
| At a glance | Carson | Shortwave |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Enterprise operations agent | Enterprise operations agent |
| Entry price | No public pricing; early access on request | $30 per seat / month (Business), rising to $45 (Premier) and $120 (Max) |
| Free / trial | Early access by request after watching the demo; no public free tier | 14-day free trial on all three plans; no free plan on the published pricing page |
| Pricing confidence | contact only | public exact |
| Feature | C Carson |
S Shortwave |
|---|---|---|
| Action & orchestration | ||
|
Integrations & Tool Calling Ability to connect agents to real systems through native integrations, OAuth-authenticated actions, custom tools, APIs, webhooks, or MCP-compatible tools. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Workflow Orchestration Ability to sequence, branch, retry, route, and combine deterministic workflow nodes with autonomous agent steps. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
|
Triggers & Channel Coverage How agents wake up and where they work: schedules, webhooks, message events, CRM events, inbox events, chat, email, voice, and collaboration tools. |
Partial | Partial |
| Knowledge & context | ||
|
Knowledge Grounding & RAG Ability to ground agent behavior in company data through document ingestion, retrieval, external knowledge APIs, semantic search, or RAG layers. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
|
Memory & State Persistence Ability to persist context across a run, conversation, workflow, user, team, or longer-term memory layer. |
No / Not documented | Partial |
| Control & trust | ||
|
Human Oversight & Guardrails Approval steps, consent checkpoints, escalation rules, structured guardrails, policy constraints, and pause/resume controls. |
Full / Explicit | Partial |
|
Security, Identity & Governance RBAC, SSO, auditability, encryption, least-privilege tool access, compliance posture, and data handling policy. |
Partial | No / Not documented |
|
Observability & Auditability Traces, logs, execution histories, metrics, audit events, and debugging detail for production agent behavior. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
|
Deployment & Data Residency Deployment modes and options, including SaaS, dedicated cloud, VPC, on-prem, hybrid, local runtime, and self-hosting. |
Partial | No / Not documented |
| Solution readiness | ||
|
Prebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Ready-made workflows, packaged employees, templates, blueprints, industry solutions, and role-specific agents that reduce time-to-value. |
Partial | No / Not documented |
| Platform extensibility | ||
|
Model Flexibility & Routing Ability to work across multiple foundation models, route tasks to different models, or let buyers bring their own providers and keys. |
No / Not documented | Full / Explicit |
|
APIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Composability layer: stable APIs, SDKs, MCP tool consumption/serving, custom tools, and integration into internal systems. |
No / Not documented | Partial |
|
Testing, Debugging & Optimization Testing, debugging, scoring, retries, fallbacks, quality gates, and optimization loops for improving agent workflows before and after deployment. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
| Specialist automation | ||
|
Browser & Computer Use Browser, desktop, or remote/local computer control for workflows that cannot be handled through stable APIs alone. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
Pricing snapshot
Sourced from the Index pricing dataset · open each vendor's profile for full detail.
| Pricing | C Carson |
S Shortwave |
|---|---|---|
|
Entry price Lowest public entry point |
No public pricing; early access on request | $30 per seat / month (Business), rising to $45 (Premier) and $120 (Max) |
|
Pricing confidence How public the numbers are |
Contact only | Public, exact |
|
Billing Primary billing axis |
Undisclosed; early access with hands on installation | Per seat subscription, with a daily AI usage quota and an intelligence ceiling set by tier |
|
Variable cost Workload / overage exposure |
Medium variable cost | Medium variable cost |
|
Free tier / trial Try before you buy |
No free tierTrial
|
No free tierTrial
|
|
Buying motion Self-serve vs sales call |
Sales call | Self-serve |
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