Meta · Alternatives
Muse alternatives: start with why it is not for you
Five reasons take people past Muse: it is sold only in the United States and Canada, its data defaults favour Meta, it runs on Meta's computer, its allowance is counted in a unit nobody defines, or what they wanted was a coding agent — which Meta sells separately as Muse Code. Each reason leads to a different shortlist. Nothing below is ranked, and we have run none of the hosted tools on it.
Why readers leave.
The first is not a choice: most of the world cannot sign up yet. The last is not a complaint about Muse at all — it is a reader who needed a different kind of tool.
It is not sold where you live
Muse is available in the United States and Canada, to adults, and Meta gives no date for anywhere else. Everywhere else, the shortlist is tools you run yourself, which have no country list, and hosted agents that sell internationally.
The defaults point towards Meta
Training on your conversations is on until you switch it off, Meta's own security write-up says today's design does not prevent Meta from reaching your data when it needs to, and an account in the same Accounts Center as Facebook and Instagram connects them automatically. Readers who would rather not police those settings leave for tools whose defaults run the other way.
It runs on a computer you do not own
The virtual machine, the memory and the meter are Meta's, and the terms let Meta end free use without notice. Readers who want the agent where they can inspect it, and where it keeps running whatever Meta decides, look at tools they host themselves.
The meter has no unit you can price
The plans are sized in Muse tokens, which no Meta document defines, and Meta prints no example of what a task uses. Readers who have to justify a cost before the work starts go where the unit is money, or at least has a price.
You wanted a coding agent
Muse writes code for its own errands but does not work in your repository. Meta's coding agent is a different product with a confusingly similar name, and the coding agents we cover are a different shelf again.
If you only read one line.
OpenClaw
You want what Muse does — a personal agent with memory, in your messaging apps, acting for you — but on hardware you control, in any country, with every token at a list price you can look up.
ChatGPT Work
You want an agent that takes a job and returns finished work, you already pay for ChatGPT, and you would rather not open a Meta account to get one.
Muse Code
You came for code. Meta's coding agent is not Muse but Muse Code, a separate command-line product on the same models with plans of its own.
Every alternative we checked.
Grouped by the reason for leaving, then by how close each tool sits to what Muse actually does — not ranked. We run no basket that scores personal agents against each other, so the first row is the nearest substitute rather than the best tool, and the coding rows at the end answer a different question from the first.
The agent inside ChatGPT for longer, multi-step work that ends in a finished document, spreadsheet, presentation, report or site.
It is the nearest thing on this list to an agent that simply does the job, from a vendor other than Meta: a multi-step task goes in and a finished deliverable comes out, from the web and mobile apps, with your local files reachable from the desktop app. It replaced ChatGPT's earlier agent mode, and on paid personal plans it comes with the subscription you may already hold, so there is no second balance to watch.
OpenAI pitches it at work that ends in a deliverable rather than at running your errands, so the parts of Muse built around a personal life — goals it tracks for you, messages it sends unprompted — are not what it is sold on. Its usage follows the same structure as Codex, with worked examples based on coding tasks, so how far a plan goes is no easier to predict than a Muse token.
Readers who want an agent that finishes work for them and would rather not hand it a Meta account.
A general agent that works a task end to end in its own cloud sandbox and hands back a report, deck, spreadsheet or web app.
It is the same architecture as Muse — a computer in the vendor's cloud that the agent works on — aimed at finished work rather than personal errands. Its checkout takes cards and wallets from well beyond North America, from China UnionPay to Alipay, and its unit has a price the bundles reveal, which is more than a Muse token can say. It also shares a history with Muse: Meta acquired it in December 2025, and the two separated in 2026.
Its meter has the opposite gap: the credit is priced, the task is not, and the vendor tells readers to treat the agent's own estimates as hallucinations. On personal plans no document says your work stays out of training, and its free tier runs only the lightest agent.
Readers outside North America who want a hosted agent of the same shape, and readers whose tasks end in a deliverable.
Persistent agents on one hosted computer, signed into your tools and working while your laptop is shut.
It is the closest architecture to Muse's from another vendor: agents on one hosted computer, signed into your tools, working on a schedule while your devices are off. Named bots with roles and memory make it the row for readers who liked that Muse keeps going without them.
It publishes even less about what you are buying: its allowance is described only in comparatives, without even an undefined unit like Muse's. It is also bundled into somebody else's subscription, billed by Cursor's parent company, and its computers run in the United States.
Readers who want standing routines — agents that keep a role and work on a schedule — on a computer the vendor runs.
A personal agent you text or call, which acts with a phone number and a computer of its own.
It is the agent Muse was launched against: TechCrunch named Muse as Instinct's new competition, and the two run the same kind of errands — bookings, purchases, follow-ups — on a computer that is not yours. You reach it by text or a phone call rather than through an app, a concierge feature phones businesses for you, and its terms keep anything in its Vault, and data from Google Workspace, out of training.
You cannot simply sign up: it is invite-only, with a waitlist that gives no date. It publishes no price at all while its terms reserve the right to charge, trains on everything else you share unless you opt out, and expects to hold your passwords and cards.
Readers who want Muse's kind of agent from a company that is not Meta, and who can get an invitation.
A personal assistant that runs as a daemon on your own computer and answers you in the messaging apps you already use.
It is the open counterpart, down to the files: Muse keeps its personality in Soul.md and Identity.md, and those are the names and fields — name, creature, vibe — of OpenClaw's workspace templates. It runs where you put it, so there is no vendor machine, no training default to switch off and no country list, and it is free software that spends model tokens at whatever rate your provider charges.
Everything Meta's machinery does for you becomes your job: installing, updating and securing a process that can reach your files, shell and inbox, and configuring whatever safeguards you want around its actions. Nothing runs while your machine is off.
Readers who want an agent they can inspect, on hardware they control, in a country Muse does not reach.
An open-source agent with persistent memory that runs in a terminal and answers on Telegram and Slack.
Muse meets you in its own app and in WhatsApp; Hermes Agent was built around messaging from the start, with a gateway to the messaging platforms and skills it writes for itself. It is MIT-licensed and never sold, and the vendor's own gateway meters in dollars — the opposite of a token nobody defines.
It is a developer's tool first: a terminal agent that you install and configure, with none of the consumer finish Meta put around Muse. Readers who never want to see a command line should stop here.
Technical readers who liked talking to an agent from a messaging app and want the same on their own terms.
Meta's coding agent: a command-line tool on the Muse Spark models, with several agents working and reviewing each task in parallel.
It is the product people mean when they look for Meta's coding agent, and it is not Muse. It installs from your terminal, runs on the same Muse Spark models, and is built around multiple agents coordinating on every task, with workers in parallel and reviewers in the background, by Meta's description. Its plans are sold on Meta's developer site, separately from Muse's.
We have not covered it, so this row is the vendor's description and nothing more. Its cheapest plan is sized at 10 to 50 prompts every five hours and the others as multiples of it, and one of them shares the name Power with a Muse plan at a different price, which makes Meta's two price lists easy to mix up.
Readers who came to Muse for code and would rather stay with Meta's models.
Anthropic's coding agent: reads a repository, edits across it and runs commands, from a terminal, editor or desktop app.
It works inside your existing codebase, on your machine and under your version control, which is the job Muse is not built for. It is also the tool this section has examined most closely, with runs of our own behind its pages.
It is a developer's tool and nothing else. It will not book a table or watch a price for you, and it has no free tier — access rides on a Claude subscription, a team seat or an API key.
Readers who arrived at Muse looking for help with code they already have.
OpenAI's coding agent, in a CLI, editors, the ChatGPT desktop app and the cloud.
It sits beside ChatGPT Work in the same desktop app and, by OpenAI's account, on the same usage structure — so one subscription covers a general agent and a coding agent. Like Claude Code, it works in your own repository rather than on a vendor's computer.
Past the included allowance its unit is a credit, which is another meter to learn. And it is a coding tool: the finished-deliverable work lives in ChatGPT Work, not here.
Readers who want a coding agent and already hold a ChatGPT plan.
Pick by what you're doing.
"Muse isn't available in my country"
You read about Muse, went to sign up, and found it limited to the United States and Canada.
Manus
It is the hosted agent nearest in shape — a cloud computer the agent works on — and its checkout takes international cards and wallets. If you would rather the agent ran on your own machine, the self-hosted rows have no country list at all.
"I don't want my life in anyone's training data"
The training default was the deal-breaker, and you would rather not depend on remembering a switch.
OpenClaw
On your own machine with your own model provider, whether prompts are used for training is a term of the provider you choose rather than a default inside the agent. The price of that is running it yourself.
"I need to know what a week will cost"
A share of an allowance in an undefined unit is not something you can put in a budget.
Hermes Agent
Its vendor's gateway meters in plain dollars, so a week of use arrives as a figure on a statement rather than as a percentage of something nobody has defined.
"I was looking for Meta's coding agent"
You searched for Meta's agent to help with your code and landed on a personal assistant.
Muse Code
That is Muse Code, not Muse: a command-line tool on the same models, sold on Meta's developer site with plans of its own. Check which product a guide is about before following it — the two share a model, a name and even a plan name.
"I already pay for ChatGPT"
You have a Plus or Pro subscription and wonder whether a Meta account would add anything.
ChatGPT Work
Work is the agent OpenAI ships inside the plan you already hold. Give it the jobs you would give Muse for a month before signing up for anything new; the one you reach for first is the answer.
"I want the same thing, just not from Meta"
You like the idea of an agent that runs your errands; you do not want it tied to a Meta account.
Instinct
It is the independent agent Muse was launched against, reached by text rather than through a Meta account. Getting in takes an invitation, and its own training default is on as well — so what changes is who holds your data, not whether it is used.
When to stay.
Three cases where leaving costs more than it saves.
Frequently asked.
What people search next.