Manus AI · Manus
Manus: a computer in the cloud, billed by the credit
A general-purpose agent that works a task end to end in its own cloud sandbox and hands back the result — not a coding agent, although it builds apps.
Manus is a general AI agent: give it a goal and it works on a cloud computer of its own, then hands back a finished report, deck, spreadsheet or web app. It is not a coding agent for your repository. It is sold in credits whose price is fixed and whose consumption is not. Meta bought it in December 2025; it has been independent again since September 2026. We have not run it.
What Manus is.
Manus is an agent in the plain sense of the word: you describe an outcome and it plans, works and delivers without being walked through each step. The vendor's own description is a virtual colleague with its own computer, and that is literally how it works — every task runs in a cloud sandbox with a browser, internet access, a file system and the ability to install software. What comes back is a finished artefact: a researched report, a slide deck, a spreadsheet or chart, generated images or video, or a website with hosting attached. There are two modes. Chat mode answers questions and costs nothing; Agent mode does the work, comes in three levels — Lite, standard and Max — and is what spends credits.
It reaches you in more places than most tools here: the web, iOS and Android apps, a desktop app for macOS and Windows that can be given access to your own machine, a browser extension for Chrome and Edge, email, Slack, Telegram, WhatsApp Business, LINE, Zapier and a public API. All of them draw on one credit balance. The thing it is not is a coding agent in the sense this section usually means. Manus does build full-stack web and mobile apps, but inside its own sandbox; the documented route to GitHub exports a Manus project into a new private repository and then pushes its changes to that repository's main branch automatically. There is no documented way to point it at an existing codebase, a terminal or an editor. If that is what you came for, the coding agents we cover are Claude Code, Codex and Cursor.
The company behind it had an unusual year, and it matters to a buyer because it touched data. On 29 December 2025 Manus announced it was joining Meta. On 11 August 2026 it announced a return to independence, describing it as part of its separation from Meta and required by regulatory requirements in jurisdictions it did not name; data generated by some users after the acquisition date was deleted on 23–24 August, after a backup window, with a restoration portal from 25 August. On 1 September it declared independent operations formally resumed under its founding team. The contracting company is Butterfly Effect Pte. Ltd. in Singapore. Who owns it now is not stated on any page we could find, and the public terms of use are dated before both events.
We have not run it. Every route beyond the free tier needs an account and a card, and even the free tier needs an account; opening one to review a product is not something this desk does. Everything on these pages is documented evidence read on the date at the top: the pricing and team pages, all forty-four pages of the documentation, the Help Center's articles on credits, billing and the service change, the terms of use, the privacy policy and the trust centre. Where those sources disagree — and on credits they disagree several times — we print both sides with links rather than picking one.
Three personal rungs, a team seat on the same ladder and an enterprise contract — each one a bundle of credits. The bundle prices a credit exactly. Nothing prices a task, and the vendor says so.
| Route | Bought as | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Pro · 4,000 credits | Subscription | $20/mo $17/mo billed annually |
| Pro · 8,000–20,000 credits | Subscription | $40/mo $34/mo billed annually |
| Pro · 40,000 credits and up | Subscription | $200/mo $167/mo billed annually |
| Team | Per seat | $20/seat/mo $16.67/mo billed annually |
| Enterprise | Per seat | Contact sales |
When it is the wrong tool.
Structural reasons, not complaints about output quality. Each is a property of how Manus is built, sold or governed, and none will be fixed by the next model it swaps in.
People leave Manus for four different reasons — the meter, the data terms, the wish to run things themselves, or the discovery that they wanted a coding agent — and each one leads to a different shortlist.
Frequently asked.
What people search next.