Robinhood Cortex vs Public's AI Agents: what the AI inside your broker can and can't do

The AI research assistant used to be a separate app. Now it sits next to the buy button. That changes the stakes: the same chat that explains why a stock moved can draft the order. Here is what Robinhood and Public say their tools do, as of October 14, 2026.

Robinhood: one assistant, one agent product

Cortex is the chat assistant in the Robinhood app. According to Wall Street Survivor's comparison, updated October 8, 2026 with company pages checked October 7, it answers portfolio and market questions in plain English, turns a request like 'large-cap stocks with low P/E ratios' into a screener and shows the criteria it used, and can set up market, stop and limit orders from a conversation, which you review and submit yourself. The same review lists Robinhood's stated limits: no buy or sell recommendations, no price predictions, no web browsing. Two catches: Cortex requires Robinhood Gold at $5 a month (first 30 days free), and it is iPhone-only for now.

Robinhood told an advisor conference in June that more than one million retail investors have used Cortex, as InvestmentNews reported. That is a company figure on usage, not on accuracy.

Robinhood Agents is the bigger step. Per the same review, an agent can scan the market, review your portfolio, build watchlists and place trades from its own separately funded account, and you can connect an outside AI through Robinhood's MCP server. Trade approvals are on by default, so the agent asks before every order until you turn that off. Robinhood's disclosure, as quoted by the reviewer, says agents can make errors, can act on outdated information, and that you could lose your entire investment.

Public: Alpha became 'Research' inside Agents

Public launched Alpha in 2023 as a GPT-4 research assistant. Its help page lists the data it draws on (SEC filings, earnings calls and transcripts, quotes, analyst ratings, news and social sentiment) and, as of that May 2024 article, said Alpha was available to all Public investors at no charge. Public's change log shows that on June 25, 2026 Alpha moved under the Agents umbrella and is now called Research, next to a new Build option.

Agents began rolling out on March 31, 2026, according to Public's press release. Public's Agents FAQ is unusually precise about what an agent is:

• It does only what you told it to do: 'You write the plan, you approve it, and the Agent follows it exactly.'
• Once approved, the plan runs deterministically. The conversation used to build the plan is not deterministic.
• It is not a robo-advisor and does not recommend trades.
• For now, agent workflows are web-only and rolling out from a waitlist.

The help page we read does not state a separate price for Agents.

Side by side

What neither firm claims

Both firms put the same boundary in writing. Robinhood says Cortex will not recommend or predict. Public's disclosure for Alpha says it 'is experimental technology and may give inaccurate or inappropriate responses' and that output should not serve as the basis for any investment decision. Its research-services terms add that output 'may result in Output that contains material inaccuracies.'

We found no published accuracy test of either assistant comparable to the chatbot tests on earnings data. The only hands-on reporting we read is descriptive. Wall Street Survivor says it ran Robinhood's agent with real money in a separate piece, which we did not read for this article.

A few house rules if you try them

• Keep approvals on. Both products let an AI act on your account. Default to asking before every order until you trust the behavior.
• Fund agents separately and small. Robinhood's design already isolates the agent's money; use that.
• Check the data timestamp. Robinhood's own disclosure warns agents can act on outdated information.
• Remember the blind spot. Each assistant sees only that broker's accounts, so its 'portfolio view' may be partial.