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Manus

A general-purpose AI agent that plans and executes multi-step tasks on its own.

automation#automate-workflows#answer-questions
Free plan API Teams Mobile app
Toolglade’s take

One of the most ambitious general agents — hand it a goal and it browses, builds, and delivers. Impressive when it works, though reliability still varies.

Manus screenshot

About Manus

Manus is a general AI agent that autonomously plans and carries out multi-step tasks — researching, browsing, writing code, and producing deliverables like reports, sites, or spreadsheets.

Manus is a general-purpose autonomous AI agent designed to take a high-level goal and actually complete it — planning the steps, browsing the web, running code, and assembling deliverables such as research reports, spreadsheets, slide decks, or simple web apps. It caught attention as one of the more capable 'do it for me' agents, working asynchronously in its own environment and returning finished work. There's a free tier with credits and paid plans for more usage. Like all agents at this stage, it's genuinely impressive on well-scoped tasks but can be inconsistent on complex or ambiguous ones — best treated as a powerful assistant you still review.

TL;DR

Manus is a general-purpose autonomous AI agent that plans and executes multi-step tasks in a cloud environment, using tools such as a browser, code execution and file creation with limited human supervision. It gained rapid attention in early 2025 as an early example of an agent that can complete complex workflows end to end. It is built by Butterfly Effect, the company behind the Monica AI assistant. Users delegate research, analysis, coding and content tasks that the agent carries out asynchronously.

Company overview

Manus is developed by Butterfly Effect, a startup founded by Xiao Hong (Red Xiao) and colleagues. Originally rooted in China, the company established its headquarters in Singapore and is also known for Monica, a browser-based AI assistant.\n\nManus launched in preview in early 2025 and became widely discussed as a demonstration of autonomous agent capabilities, positioning the company at the center of the AI-agent wave.

Product features

Manus operates as an autonomous agent that decomposes a goal into steps and executes them in a sandboxed cloud computer, browsing the web, running code, generating documents, spreadsheets, websites and reports, and returning finished deliverables. Work runs asynchronously so tasks continue after the user steps away.\n\nThe platform uses a credit-based model where more complex tasks consume more credits, and offers varying levels of task concurrency and tool access by plan. It is designed for open-ended tasks rather than a single narrow function.

Target market

Manus targets professionals, researchers, developers, analysts, marketers and knowledge workers who want to delegate complex, multi-step digital tasks to an autonomous agent, along with early adopters exploring agentic AI workflows.

Buyer personas

End users

Researchers, developers, analysts, marketers and power users delegating multi-step tasks to an agent.

Buyers

Individual subscribers and small teams; enterprises evaluating agentic automation.

Key influencers

AI early adopters, tech commentators and agent-focused developer communities.

Ideal customer profile

Tech-forward professionals who want to offload open-ended, multi-step digital work to an autonomous AI agent.

Funding & performance

Butterfly Effect (the maker of Manus) raised a $75M Series B at a roughly $500M valuation led by Benchmark in April 2025, with earlier backing from investors including Tencent, HongShan (Sequoia China) and ZhenFund; reported total funding is around $88M. In December 2025 Meta reportedly agreed to acquire Manus for about $2B, but Chinese regulators ordered the deal unwound in April 2026 and its status remained unresolved as of mid-2026.

Pros & cons

Pros

  • Autonomously completes multi-step tasks end to end
  • Produces real deliverables (reports, sites, spreadsheets)
  • Works asynchronously so you can hand off and return

Cons

  • Reliability varies on complex or ambiguous tasks
  • Credit-based usage can be consumed quickly
  • Still needs human review of the output

Pricing plans

Free
$0 / month
  • Daily refresh credits (about one task per day)
  • One-time signup bonus credits
  • Access to core agent
  • Limited concurrency
Starter
$19 / month
  • Monthly credit allowance
  • Higher task limits than free
  • Limited concurrent tasks
  • Standard tool access
Pro
$199 / month
  • Large credit allowance
  • Highest task concurrency
  • Full tool access
  • Longer task horizons
  • Priority processing

Key features

API
Mobile app
Team collaboration
Multi-language
Integrations
Web browser, Code execution sandbox, Third-party APIs
Input types
text, file, image
Output types
text, report, code, website, spreadsheet
Best For
Autonomous task execution, Research and analysis, Data and report generation

Compare key features

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Manus
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Pricing
Freemium
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Freemium
Free plan
Yes
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Yes
Free trial
No
No
No
API
Yes
Yes
Yes
Self-hosted
No
Yes
No
Team support
Yes
Yes
Yes

Frequently asked questions

Is Manus free?+

There's a free tier with limited credits; paid plans add more usage.

What is Manus?+

A general AI agent that plans and executes multi-step tasks and returns finished deliverables.

What can Manus make?+

Research reports, spreadsheets, slide decks, simple web apps, and other multi-step outputs.

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