Alternatives · AI work, paid per job

Pay per task,
not per month.

Four comparisons, each leading with a different reason. Beside each one is a piece of the page itself.

01

vs Manus — every job, priced in dollars

A credit bundles model tokens, virtual machines and third-party APIs into one unit with no published dollar value. Else prints the figure, itemized.

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One task, two meters
Model tokens—$0.0461
Virtual machine—$0.0188
Third-party calls—$0.0170
What it cost30 credits$0.260554
02

vs ChatGPT — it hands back the finished file

One gives you an answer to work from; the other gives you the deck. Six real files sit on that page, downloadable without an account.

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What the same afternoon produced
PPTX
specialty_coffee_roastery_investor_deck.pptx
44 KB · 6 slides · opens in PowerPoint
Smart tier · ~90s $0.203537
03

vs Claude Cowork — no plan to buy first

Cowork comes with a paid Claude plan and works on folders you point it at. Else is a tab you open — nothing to install, no machine that has to be the machine.

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What it takes to get in
Paid plan required
Pro $20/mo
Max from $100/mo
elsedoes.com
Open a tab.
Hand over a job.
To get here $0.00
04

vs Grok Bot — a stop line you set yourself

Grok Bot arrives with a subscription that includes a weekly usage allowance, and on paid Grok plans features pause when it is met. Else has no allowance to run out — the run stops just past a dollar figure you chose, and asks.

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Where the stop line comes from
Weekly allowance
Met mid-week?
Paid features pause
until it resets
elsedoes.com
You set the ceiling.
It stops just past it and asks.
Default ceiling on work you hand off $5.00

Every claim about another company comes from that company’s own published pages, with the date we checked. Each page ends by telling you when to buy the other one instead.

Start free — no card
The common thread

They all sell a month.
We sell the job.

Four different meters — credits, credits, an allocation, a weekly allowance — and none of them is money. That is the one thing this site is built to change.

What you are told elsewhere
− 30 credits

A number in a unit you cannot convert. It tells you something was spent; it does not tell you what the job was worth, or whether to do it again.

What Else tells you
$0.260554
Smart tier · 90 s · real run you can replay

The price follows the tier you picked, which is why an amount never appears on this site without the tier beside it. Twelve replayable receipts, unedited →

When to keep what you have

A subscription is sometimes
the right instrument.

Per-task pricing is not universally better. Here is when a plan wins, plainly.

You use it every day
Per-task pricing wins on volume you do not have. If you are handing off work daily, a flat monthly seat is simply cheaper arithmetic, and no amount of transparency changes that.
You already pay for the plan
If a task agent is already included in a subscription you buy for other reasons, its marginal cost to you is zero. We cannot beat zero, and we are not going to pretend to.
You need a bill that cannot move
A monthly allowance cannot surprise you: past it you are slowed, not charged more. Else gives you a dollar ceiling on every run instead, which is a different kind of control. For strict month-to-month budget certainty, a plan is the better instrument.
You need teams, an API or a native app
Else is individual accounts, in a browser, installable as a web app. There is no shared workspace, no public API and nothing in the App Store yet. If procurement is involved or you are building on top of an agent, buy the one that has those today.
Questions people actually ask

The ones we hear most.

What is a pay-as-you-go alternative to subscription AI agents?
An agent you pay for by the job rather than by the month. Else works that way: there is no plan and no credit bundle, you top up a balance in US dollars, each run draws from it, and each run ends with an itemized receipt showing the total, the spending limit that was set, how much of it was used, and the lines underneath. The balance never expires and nothing is charged in a month when nothing runs. What a run costs follows from the engine tier you picked — Auto, Fast, Smart or Max — which is why no price appears on this site without its tier beside it.
When is a subscription the better buy?
When you use it a lot, when you already pay for it, or when a bill that cannot move matters more than knowing what each job cost. Our five published runs averaged about $0.46 each on the Auto tier, so a $20 monthly seat is worth roughly 43 handed-off jobs — above that the seat is cheaper on price alone. If a task agent is already included in a plan you buy for other reasons, its marginal cost to you is zero and we cannot beat that. And a monthly allowance cannot surprise you, whereas Else stops a run just past your spending limit rather than exactly at it.
Which AI agents does Else compare itself against?
Manus, ChatGPT, Claude Cowork and Grok Bot, each on its own page, and each leading with a different thing: dollar-priced jobs against Manus, finished files against ChatGPT, no plan to buy against Claude Cowork, and a stop line you set yourself against Grok Bot. Every competitor claim comes from a page that company publishes, with the date we checked it, and every page ends by telling you when to buy the other product instead.
Is there a free alternative to these AI agents?
Partly, and it depends which one you mean. Manus publishes a free tier — its own pricing help article lists “$0/month” with “300 credits provided daily”, checked 25 August 2026. Claude Cowork has none: Anthropic’s own help article says Cowork “is available on paid plans (Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise)”, checked the same day. Else is not free either, but nothing about it recurs: a new account starts with a free balance and no card, each run spends from that balance, and a month in which you hand nothing over costs nothing at all. If what you actually need is free for ever, a metered free tier on one of the big plans will serve you better than we will, and we would rather say that here than have you find it out after signing up.
Is Else open source?
No. There is no public repository and no self-hosting option, so if that is a hard requirement then this is not the tool for you. What this product publishes instead is the money: every run ends with an itemized receipt in US dollars beside the engine tier that produced it, and real runs are published with their files and their prices attached — including the ones that came back with nothing. That is a different kind of transparency from source code, and it is worth being plain about which of the two you are being offered.

Try it on one real job.

Try Else

One job, one receipt, no plan to cancel · Price depends on the tier — Auto, Fast, Smart, or Max.

All trademarks are the property of their respective owners; their use here is for identification and comparison only and does not imply endorsement or affiliation. Each comparison page carries its own capture date — 30 July 2026 for Manus and ChatGPT, 25 August 2026 for Claude Cowork. Spot an inaccuracy? Email hello@elsedoes.com and we'll fix it.

Last updated 25 August 2026.

Try Else