Choosing an alternative to Manus
We're one of the products in this comparison, so read the second half with that in mind. The first half is written to be true regardless of who you sign up with.
A note on accuracy: both products ship changes monthly. This page compares the underlying design choices — things that are expensive to reverse — rather than a feature checklist that would be stale in a few weeks. Check each product's current state before you commit.
Manus did something real: it took the idea of a general AI agent out of a chat window and put it on its own persistent cloud computer, and it did it early enough to define what people now expect from the category. If you are looking for a Manus alternative, it is usually for one of a few specific reasons — cost, waitlist or access friction, or one of the two design questions below that Manus answers differently than you need.
What Manus gets right
A machine that persists between tasks instead of resetting is the correct call, and Manus was ahead of most of the industry in shipping it. If your work is mostly "give it a goal, come back later for the result," a persistent background agent is a good fit, and Manus is a genuine, well-built option in that shape.
The two questions that actually separate these products
1. Can you watch it while it works?
A results summary written after the fact is a report, not evidence — the same system that might have misread a page is the one telling you it went fine. Watching the actual screen, live, as the agent moves through it, is a different guarantee. Check whether the product you're looking at gives you a real-time view or a post-hoc log.
2. Can you take over mid-task, and hand it back?
Every agent eventually hits a CAPTCHA, a login only you can complete, or a judgement call it shouldn't make alone. Background-first agents are generally built around you checking in later, not reaching in right now — which means a stuck task either waits for you to notice or fails outright. If the tasks you send an agent regularly touch logins or ambiguous decisions, this is the question that matters most.
Where MyClawn sits
MyClawn is built around those two questions as the design centre, not an add-on: you watch the actual desktop stream live, and you can click in, take the mouse and keyboard mid-task, fix the thing only you can fix, and hand it back — the agent picks up where you left it. The machine persists the same way, and it has its own email address, so a task can end in a message actually sent from the agent rather than a draft you copy out.
Signing up is free, with no install and no card; a dedicated cloud computer starts at $19/month with AI credits included. The pricing table is on the homepage, and you can watch a real run before you sign up for anything.
One thing it does not do yet, so you do not find out later: it does not receive email (sending works, replies do not land). The honest limits are kept current on /llms.txt.
When you should stay with Manus, or something else entirely
If your tasks are genuinely fire-and-forget — nothing that could need a mid-task decision, nothing behind a login only you hold — then live watching and takeover are guarantees you are paying for and not using, and a background-first agent is the more efficient choice. And if your volume is a handful of tasks a month, check whether a general assistant's agent mode covers it before paying for any dedicated machine at all.
Related
- Giving an AI agent its own computer
- Watch an AI agent work
- Choosing an alternative to ChatGPT agent mode
Questions people ask
What does Manus get right?
A general agent on a persistent cloud computer instead of a chat window. If your work is “give it a goal, come back later”, a background-first agent is a good fit and Manus is a well-built one.
What are the two questions that separate these products?
Can you watch the screen live while it works, and can you take over mid-task and hand back. Those decide whether jobs behind logins and judgement calls finish or stall.
When should I stay with a background-first agent?
When nothing in your tasks needs a mid-task decision or a login only you hold, and your volume is low. Live watching and takeover are guarantees you would be paying for and not using.