Alternatives · AI work, paid per job

Pay per task,
not per month.

Most AI agents sell you a month. Else sells you the job: no plan, no credit bundle, a balance in US dollars, and an itemized receipt every time something runs. If that is the thing you are looking for, the comparisons below are written to help you decide against us as easily as for us.

Before you read a word of this. Anything we say about another company comes from that company’s own published pages, and we print the date we checked. Where they publish nothing, we say so rather than guess. And every comparison here ends by telling you when to buy the other one instead — which you can hold us to, because we also published five real Else jobs with their receipts, and two of those five came back with nothing and were charged anyway. A comparison where the company writing it wins everything is an advertisement.
Three comparisons

Pick the one you are actually weighing.

A pay-as-you-go Manus alternative — with per-task pricing
Manus meters work in credits: one unit that, by its own documentation, covers model tokens, virtual machines and third-party APIs together, with no published dollar value for a single credit. So what one task cost cannot be worked out from what is published. Else charges per task in US dollars beside the tier that ran. Where Manus wins: a predictable monthly bill, a team account with SSO and audit logs, a public REST API, and apps on every platform.
Read the full comparison →
A ChatGPT agent alternative — for occasional work
A ChatGPT Plus seat is $20 a month whether you use it or not. Our five published runs averaged about $0.46 on the Auto tier, so $20 buys roughly 43 handed-off jobs — below that, paying per task costs less; above it, the seat does. The arithmetic is on the page, including the parts that cut against us: ChatGPT has a free tier, and if your occasional work fits inside it then free beats both of us.
Read the full comparison →
A Claude Cowork alternative — without a subscription
Cowork is not sold on its own: it comes inside a paid Claude plan, and a task spends a usage allocation that is never expressed in money. Anthropic publishes its plan prices plainly — it is the per-job figure that does not exist. Else has no plan to buy. The honest counterweight is on the page: if you already pay for Claude, Cowork costs you nothing extra, and an allocation cannot hand you a surprise bill.
Read the full comparison →
The common thread

They all sell a month.
We sell the job.

Three different meters — credits, credits, an allocation — 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
$0.0819
Auto tier · 22 s · real run, 30 July 2026

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

Read this before switching

When you should not pick us.

Short, and every line is on one of the comparison pages with the numbers behind it.

You use it every day
Per-task pricing wins on volume you do not have. Past roughly 43 handed-off jobs a month — at the $0.46 Auto-tier average from our five published runs — a $20 seat is simply cheaper, 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. Our spending limit is checked after a step has been billed, so a run stops just past your number rather than at it. For strict budget certainty, a plan is the better instrument.
You need teams, an API, a phone app — or long open-web research
There is no team account, no public API and no native app; Else runs in a browser and can be installed as a web app. And on 30 July 2026 the two of our five runs that had to read their way around the open web produced no file and no answer, and were charged $0.6169 and $0.6027 anyway on the Auto tier. If that is your job type, do not start with us.
Questions people actually ask

The three 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 and Claude Cowork, each on its own page. Every competitor claim on those pages is quoted from a page that company publishes, with the date we checked it, and every one of them ends by telling you when to buy the other product instead — including the two of our five published runs that produced nothing and were billed anyway.

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, 11 August 2026 for Claude Cowork. Spot an inaccuracy? Email hello@elsedoes.com and we'll fix it.

Last updated 11 August 2026.

Try Else