How we ranked these Manus alternatives
The job this list ranks for is Manus's own: you describe a task once, and an agent works through it by itself and hands back something finished, such as a slide deck, a report, a spreadsheet or a working web page. Each agent was placed on how much of that job it covers from start to finish, how it charges (credits, quotas or your own model bill), what you can try free, where it runs, what happens to your data, and what public head-to-head tests show. Prices, limits and claims were read on October 25, 2026 (Muse's plan prices on October 17) and link to their sources; where a vendor's own pricing page could not be read, the card says where the figure comes from.
Genspark is first because it covers the most of what Manus does in one subscription and has the most public comparisons against Manus. ChatGPT Work is second because many people already pay for it. Agents that do a narrower job, such as OpenClaw's self-hosted assistant or Muse's errands, sit lower because they replace only part of Manus, not because they are worse at their part.
What changed at Manus in 2026
Manus had an unsettled year, which is why many people are looking around.
- China blocked Meta's planned purchase of Manus on April 27, 2026 (TechCrunch), and Manus has run independently again since September 1 (Manus).
- During the split, new subscriptions were paused in unnamed regions from August 11 (Manus help), and some accounts lost data created from December 29, 2025 (Manus).
- Manus 2.0 arrived on September 28 with a desktop workspace, automations, a rentable Cloud Computer and a separate personal-agent app, Cue (Manus).
- In October Manus raised more than $500 million in a round led by Boyu Capital (SiliconANGLE), and OPPO said Manus will power the agent mode on its Find X10 phones (OPPO).
- Salt Labs showed it could take over a Manus agent with one crafted email; Manus fixed it before the report was published (TechRadar).
Pricing kept its shape: a free plan with 300 credits a day, capped at 1,500 a month and limited to Manus 2.0 Lite, and Pro from $20 a month for 4,000 credits (Manus help). Credits pay for model tokens, virtual machines and outside APIs, so the cost of a task is hard to know in advance (Manus help). Our Manus review has the full picture.
Which kind of agent you need
"Manus alternative" covers several kinds of tool. Pick the kind first, then the product.
- Cloud task agents (Genspark, ChatGPT Work, Kimi Agent, MiniMax Agent, Skywork) are the closest to Manus: you hand over a task and come back to finished files.
- Desktop agents (WorkBuddy, the MiniMax Code app) work on the files on your own computer, which suits office work on folders of documents you already have.
- A self-hosted assistant (OpenClaw) is free software on your own machine; you pay your model provider and do the setup and security yourself.
- Errand agents (Muse, Perplexity's Comet browser) do things on websites for you, such as bookings, shopping and forms. They do not build decks or reports.
- A design agent (Lovart) turns a brief into posters, social images, brand kits and short videos on a canvas. In a 2025 test on 36Kr it matched Manus on image quality and was far faster, but it does not research or build spreadsheets, so it is not ranked here.
- An agent builder (Coze) lets you design a bot or workflow once and publish it to Discord, Telegram or Slack; its core, Coze Studio, is open source under Apache 2.0. You build the agent yourself, so it is not a hand-off replacement for Manus.
What public comparisons show
No public test has compared Manus 2.0 with these agents yet. The comparisons that exist ran in 2025 on earlier versions, so read them as a guide to each product's character rather than a final score.
- The Remote Labor Index from Scale AI and the Center for AI Safety gave agents 230 real paid freelance projects. Manus completed 2.5% to a standard a client would accept, the best result; ChatGPT agent completed 1.3%.
- MIT Technology Review found Manus beat ChatGPT Deep Research on two of three research jobs in March 2025, but it was slower and failed more often.
- Techpoint Africa ran seven writing and research tasks through Manus and Genspark in August 2025: Manus was deeper and more accurate, Genspark faster and more visual, with no overall winner.
- The Tool Nerd gave Manus, Genspark and Skywork the same deck prompt in June 2025. Skywork won on structure and depth, Genspark on visuals, and Manus made 19 slides with generic titles.
- Analytics Vidhya set Manus and ChatGPT agent four tasks in July 2025: Manus passed two, ChatGPT agent one.
- AppSo asked four agents for the same retirement-planning deck in July 2025. Manus was fastest at under 10 minutes; MiniMax took nearly an hour and was the most detailed; the author liked Kimi's long, cited report best.
- woshipm.com found Kimi's OK Computer beat Manus on maths courseware and a travel site in September 2025 and ran about 20 to 30% faster.
Genspark's launch claim of 87.8% on the GAIA benchmark against 86% for Manus is the vendor's own figure, as VentureBeat reported it.
- Flowith puts many models side by side on a canvas and adds Agent Neo for long tasks, from $19.90 a month. It is not ranked: its free plan is a one-time 300 credits, we could not confirm how widely it is used, and no independent test against Manus was found.
- Lovart is a design agent rather than a general one (see above), and its Trustpilot page is dominated by billing complaints.
- Coze gives 10 free credits a day on its international edition; reports of Coze Space, the agent workspace often compared with Manus, cover only the China edition.
- Perplexity Comet is covered with Perplexity Computer above: it is a browser agent for tasks on sites you are logged into, not a maker of files.