Rool Review (2026): Pricing, Features & Honest Verdict

TLDR

Rool is a private cloud computer with an AI assistant built in, hosted in Finland by a Dublin company. The free plan is generous and the privacy paperwork is unusually honest, but credits are opaque and the product is young. Best for: privacy-minded Europeans. Price: from EUR 9/mo, free plan yes. Rating: 7.0/10.

What is Rool?

We found Rool on Product Hunt, where it launched on 7 October 2026. It pitches itself as your own AI machine: a Linux virtual machine in the cloud that holds your files, runs software and keeps a memory of your work, with an AI assistant living inside the same machine. You talk to it through a chat, but the chat sits on top of a real computer rather than a stateless model.

The company behind it is Lightpost One Ltd, trading as Rool, based in Dublin, Ireland, and its terms are governed by Irish law. Machines and files are stored in Finland, and most AI requests run on models the company hosts itself on EU hardware. There is a web version, apps for iPhone and Android, and a TypeScript SDK for developers who want to drive machines from their own code.

What Are Rool’s Key Features?

A private Linux machine behind every chat

Each Rool Machine is an isolated virtual machine, and the storage of each one is encrypted with its own key, according to the privacy policy. The assistant runs inside that machine, so it can read your documents, create new files, transform a batch of images, run calculations or work on code. The FAQ describes the operating system as one the company built to be operated by AI. You get two machines on the free plan and five on Pro, which suits keeping work and personal projects apart.

Objects as long-term memory

Rool turns chats, files and ideas into Objects that stay in the machine and can be linked to each other. The vendor contrasts this with chat tools that compress old sessions into a short summary. In practice, the idea is that you return to a project weeks on and the AI still has the files and decisions, not a vague note about them. The SDK exposes the same Objects as JSON files on the machine, which is a nice touch for developers.

Self-hosted models in the EU

The headline promise is that your AI runs on models Rool hosts itself, on GPU servers in Finland. You do not pick a model; Rool picks one per request and does not publish a model list. A backup provider in Ireland takes over when the house models are busy, and Google’s Vertex AI handles image generation in the EU. Each optional provider can be switched off in Settings, at the price of losing the feature it powers.

Sharing, connectors and an SDK

You can invite people into a machine so everyone works on the same files and memory, with live sync and undo history. Plus and Pro add connectors and custom MCP servers so outside services can feed the machine. The SDK is published as the @rool-dev/sdk package at version 2.1.0 under the MIT licence, with public source code, and it can run Linux commands inside a machine from Node.js.

What Is It Like to Use Rool?

We did not install Rool, so this describes the workflow as the vendor’s site, FAQ and developer docs show it. Signup asks for no card. You land in a chat, and the FAQ is clear that you never need to touch Objects or code. Uploads go into the machine, and the assistant can work on them or produce new documents.

Credits shape the experience more than anything else. The free plan holds up to 1,000 credits and refills 10 per hour. A typical reasoning prompt averages about 10 credits, so the vendor’s own estimate is 20 to 25 reasoning prompts per day on the free plan. Simple questions can cost 1 credit, while media generation and heavy repeated work cost more. When the balance runs dry, AI features pause until refills arrive, but you can still read and edit everything in the machine.

The apps are early. The iPhone version was first published on 7 September 2026, sits at version 0.6.1, needs iOS 15 or newer, carries a 17+ age rating and had no ratings yet in the Irish store when we checked. The Android listing shows more than 1,000 installs.

Where Does Rool Fall Short?

Credits are only loosely defined. The FAQ says they match compute one to one and gives the 10 credits per reasoning prompt average, but there is no published rate for image generation, web search or a long file job. You cannot choose a model, and the site does not name the models it runs, so judging quality before you sign up is hard.

The EU story has more footnotes than the marketing site suggests. The FAQ says most requests run on Rool’s own models, not all of them. Web search goes to Brave and Scholar search to SerpApi, both in the United States, and each keeps queries for weeks. Email your machine sends and receives is stored by an email provider in the United States, content included. Sign-in records and delivery of the web app may also leave the EU.

Two small contradictions stand out. The FAQ calls the site analytics self-hosted, but the subprocessor register lists a cloud analytics service run by a New Zealand company, and the marketing site loads its script from that cloud. The site also says it uses no third-party trackers, yet the privacy policy says visitors who arrive from Google or Reddit ads have their visit, signup and first use reported back to those platforms with the ad identifier.

Deletion is slower than you might assume. Each machine keeps restore points: hourly for a day, one per day for 30 days and one per month for as long as the machine exists. Anything you delete inside a machine lives on in those restore points until they expire, and the AI request logs stay for 30 days regardless.

The commercial side is thin. There is no annual plan, no team plan yet, fees are non-refundable unless the law says otherwise, and the liability limit on the free plan is EUR 100.

How Much Does Rool Cost?

Rool starts at EUR 9 per month for Plus, with a free Standard plan that has no time limit and needs no card. Pro costs EUR 25 per month. No annual option appears anywhere on the site, and the pricing page does not say whether VAT is included. The creator programme page works out 35 percent of a Pro customer as EUR 8.75, excluding VAT, which hints that the listed prices are net of tax, but the pricing page itself is silent.

Standard gives 240 credits per day as 10 per hour, a 1,000 credit balance limit, two machines and 1 GB of storage per machine. Plus gives 1,200 credits per day at 50 per hour, a 2,000 balance limit, two machines with 2 GB each, plus a custom subdomain and connectors. Pro gives 4,800 credits per day at 200 per hour, a 5,000 balance limit, five machines with 10 GB each and priority support.

Using the vendor’s 10 credits per reasoning prompt average, that works out to roughly 24 prompts per day free, 120 on Plus and 480 on Pro. Storage cannot be bought separately, so needing more space means moving up a plan.

There is also a one-time voucher: 3,000 credits for EUR 5, redeemable on any plan, including the free one, and transferable to a friend. That is about 300 reasoning prompts. Per credit, Plus is far cheaper over a month, since EUR 9 buys about 36,000 credits, but the voucher suits a free user with a busy week.

Against rivals, Rool’s Plus price undercuts the main European chat assistants. Proton’s private assistant is EUR 9.99 per month on its yearly plan, Mistral’s Pro tier is EUR 14.99 per month before tax, and Anthropic’s Pro plan is USD 20 per month. None of those include a persistent Linux machine, though all three have published usage terms that are easier to reason about than credits.

Who is Rool Best For?

Use Rool if you want an AI assistant that remembers your projects, works on real files and keeps your data in the EU under Irish law. It suits freelancers, researchers and small teams in Europe who would rather not send documents to a US chat service, and developers who like the idea of driving a cloud machine from an MIT-licensed SDK.

Skip Rool if you want to choose your model, need predictable heavy usage, or require a strict promise that nothing leaves the EU. You should also wait if you need annual billing, a team plan with admin controls, or a mature phone app.

Best Rool Alternatives

Lumo

Proton’s private AI assistant encrypts chats in a way Proton says it cannot read, and runs inside Proton’s European infrastructure. Lumo Plus costs EUR 9.99 per month on the yearly plan, billed as EUR 119.88, and there is a free tier. It is a chat assistant rather than a cloud computer, so it cannot run software for you.

Le Chat by Mistral

Mistral is a French model maker, and its Pro plan costs EUR 14.99 per month excluding taxes, with a free plan for light use. You get Mistral’s own models, coding sessions, image generation and project folders, plus a clearer view of which model you are using than Rool gives.

Claude

Anthropic’s assistant offers projects, file analysis and strong writing and coding models. The Pro plan is USD 20 per month billed monthly or USD 17 per month billed yearly, and Max tiers add more usage. It is the stronger pick for raw model quality, but your data is handled by a US company.

Final Verdict: Is Rool Worth It?

Rool is worth trying, and the free plan makes that painless. The idea of a persistent machine with memory, rather than a chat that forgets, is a real step past most assistants, and the privacy policy and subprocessor register are more candid than most we read. The no-training promise is written into the terms and applies to every plan.

The rough edges are real, though. Credits are hard to map onto actual work, models are unnamed, and the EU claim needs the footnotes about search, email and ad measurement. Start on the free plan, switch off the optional providers you do not need, and move to Plus at EUR 9 only once you know how fast you burn credits.