Superhuman is a genuinely great piece of craft: a keyboard-first client that makes working through a Gmail or Outlook inbox faster than anything else, with the kind of speed and polish that takes years. It is a client on top of your existing mail. HAL is the other shape — it gives you an address of its own, and the assistant that reads it is the product, sharing memory with your calendar, your notes and everything else.
| Superhuman | HAL | |
|---|---|---|
| Speed through an inbox | The point of the product. Keyboard-first, extremely fast | Ordinary reading speed. This is not a race we win |
| Where the mail lives | On top of Gmail or Outlook | An address at gethal.com, plus accounts you connect |
| Writing a reply | AI drafting, snippets, shortcuts | Ask HAL — it knows the thread and everything else about you |
| Finding an old email | Fast search | Describe it in words; HAL searches across your providers |
| Turning mail into the rest of your day | Reminders and follow-ups inside mail | A reminder, an event or a note in the same product, no bridge |
| Rules and triage | Split inbox, powerful triage | Rules for auto-archive and spam. Simpler |
| Craft | Exceptional. Genuinely | A younger product and it shows |
Written from each product’s public documentation. These are good, mature tools and this page says where they are still better. No prices here: they change on their own and the page would end up lying without anyone touching it.
It has a real inbox and can read, search, reply, send and archive. It is not trying to be the fastest keyboard-driven client, which is exactly what Superhuman is.
Yes, at gethal.com, and you can also connect existing accounts.
It drafts and sends replies when you ask, with the thread and your history as context.
Yes, and it can create rules to auto-archive or mark spam.
Because the assistant is not a panel bolted onto the side — the same memory that reads your mail knows your week and your notes, so "reply and put it in my calendar" is one request.
No. Speed through a large inbox is what Superhuman was built for and it wins on that.
Keyboard-first triage at real speed, split inbox, deep Gmail and Outlook integration, and years of interaction polish.