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Looking for a Manus alternative? We compare 7 AI agents, from Genspark and Flowith to open-source LibreChat: what each does best and what it costs in 2026.
2026/10/08
Manus made "general AI agent" a mainstream idea: give it a goal, and it plans, browses, writes code and hands back a finished result. It's still a strong product. But 2026 has given plenty of users a reason to look around.
Meta agreed to buy Manus in late December 2025. China's regulators then ordered the deal unwound in April 2026, and in August Manus announced it would operate independently again. As part of the separation it said some user data created after 29 December 2025 had to be deleted, and gave users a short window to export their work. Add credit-based pricing that is easy to burn through on long tasks, and it makes sense to know your options.
Here are 7 alternatives listed on AIDirs, what each is actually good at, and what it costs as of October 2026.
For comparison: Manus's free plan gives 300 credits a day, Chat Mode, and the lighter Manus 2.0 Lite model in Agent Mode, with one task at a time. Pro starts at $20 a month for 4,000 monthly credits (or $40 for 8,000), unlocks Manus 2.0 and 2.0 Max, and runs up to 20 tasks at once. It does research, slides, websites and scheduled automations. Manus has also simplified its plans (the old Basic and Plus tiers are now Pro), so if cost was your main complaint, the daily free credits plus careful prompting may be enough. If those numbers work for you and you're comfortable with the company's situation, you may not need to switch.
Genspark is the most direct like-for-like replacement. Its Super Agent breaks a request into steps, picks tools and delivers a finished result. The current version runs each task in a dedicated sandbox with a real browser and its own filesystem, can run several tasks in parallel inside one project, and lets you save any workflow as a reusable "skill" you can share with your team. Around it sit specialised agents for slides, docs, sheets and deep research.
Pricing: the free plan gives 100 credits a day up to a lifetime allowance. Plus costs $24.99 a month, or $19.99 a month billed annually, with 10,000 credits. Since September 2026 Plus also includes a weekly Free Quota for Standard-mode agent tasks that doesn't use credits, which matters if credit burn was your main complaint about Manus.
Best for: people who want Manus-style "do the whole task" behaviour with more built-in office outputs.
Flowith takes a different approach to the interface. Instead of a chat thread, work happens on an infinite canvas where you can see and branch the agent's steps. Its Agent Neo is pitched as an agent with "infinite steps, infinite context, infinite tools," designed for long multi-step jobs: research dashboards, websites, small games and slide decks built from a YouTube video. Flowith also says Neo leads the GAIA benchmark for general AI agents; treat that as the vendor's own claim.
Pricing: the free Starter plan includes 300 one-time credits. Pro is $19.90 a month ($17.91 billed yearly), and Ultimate ($49.90) adds an Unlimited Mode for selected models with a lower-priority queue.
Best for: visual thinkers and anyone whose tasks branch in many directions.
If you mostly used Manus to build websites and apps, Atoms is more specialised. It comes from the team behind the open-source MetaGPT framework and works like a small AI company. A research agent looks for demand, a product manager writes the spec, an architect designs the system, an engineer builds a full-stack app, and SEO and ads agents help with launch. A team-lead agent coordinates them and asks for your approval at key steps.
Pricing: a free plan with a small daily credit allowance; Pro starts at $20 a month and Max at $100 a month, with larger credit tiers available.
Best for: founders and indie makers validating and shipping an idea without writing code.
Manus can produce images and slides, but Lovart is built only for design. It calls itself an AI design agent. Upload a brand guide, write one prompt, and it can generate a full campaign kit in your brand style on a single canvas. It also supports targeted "touch" edits and keeps text on separate, editable layers rather than baking it into the image, which is usually where AI design tools fall down.
Pricing: credit-based monthly and annual plans; check its pricing page for current tiers.
Best for: marketers, e-commerce sellers and founders who need on-brand assets, not research reports.
Many people search for "Manus alternatives open source" because they'd rather not hand their data to a hosted agent. LibreChat is one of the most established answers. It's an open-source AI platform you can run on your own server, with one interface for models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Azure, AWS and others. It goes well beyond chat: agents with file handling, a code interpreter and API actions, MCP support for connecting tools, persistent memory, built-in web search, and enterprise sign-in (OAuth, SAML, LDAP). The project has more than 45,000 GitHub stars and recently announced it is joining ClickHouse.
Pricing: free, open-source software. You pay for hosting and the model APIs you connect.
Best for: teams and technical users who want agent features under their own control. It is less hands-off than Manus, so expect to design your agents and tools yourself.
Anthropic's Claude has grown from a chatbot into an agent. On paid plans you can hand off and schedule tasks, let Claude work in your browser (Claude in Chrome), use Claude Code for software work, and create slides, documents and designs. The free plan already searches the web, creates files and runs code.
Pricing: Pro is $20 a month, or $17 a month billed annually. Max starts at $100 a month for 5 or 20 times more usage.
Best for: people who want a single subscription for writing, analysis, coding and agentic tasks, rather than a separate agent tool.
A lot of what people use Manus for is really "go to these websites and do this for me." Perplexity's Comet browser builds that into the browser itself. It's free to download for Mac and Windows, and its Comet Assistant sits in a side panel. It can summarise the page you're on, compare information across tabs (mention any tab with @), and carry out supervised actions like researching, filling in forms, scheduling and shopping, while you watch.
Pricing: the browser is free to use, with usage limits on the assistant. Comet Plus, a separate add-on for premium publisher content, costs $5 on its own and is included with Perplexity Pro and Max.
Best for: web-based chores where you want to stay in the loop, rather than handing a task off to run in a cloud sandbox.
Agent demos are always impressive. Your own tasks are what matter. Before you pay, run the same three tests on every candidate:
Keep a note of the credits each run consumed. On every platform here, cost depends on how complex the task is, so your real monthly bill will come from your own workload, not the plan headline.
Before you move: export your work. The Manus episode showed that hosted agent platforms can change ownership, terms or data policies quickly. Whatever you choose, regularly download important outputs (files, decks, code) rather than leaving them only inside the agent's workspace.
Browse more options in the AI Agent category on AIDirs. Building an agent yourself? Submit it here.
