Else vs Manus (2026) — an honest comparison

The short answer. Manus sells a monthly plan and meters your work in credits — one unit that, by its own documentation, covers model tokens, virtual machines and third-party APIs together. Else sells no plan at all: you top up a balance in US dollars, pick an engine tier — Auto, Fast, Smart or Max — and each run ends with a receipt in dollars printed beside the tier that produced it. Pick Manus if you want a predictable monthly bill, a team account, an API, and apps on every platform. Pick Else if you want to know, in money, what each job cost. Where Else is currently worse is written out below, with the numbers.

The difference in one line

Manus tells you a task took credits.
Else tells you it cost $0.0819 on the Auto tier.

Both halves of that sentence are checkable. Manus's help centre defines a credit as covering model tokens, virtual machines and third-party APIs together, and says it cannot yet estimate a task's consumption before you start. The amount on the right is off a real Else receipt from 30 July 2026 — one of five published unedited, failures included.

Metered in credits

− 30 credits

One unit for three different things — model tokens, a virtual machine, and any third-party service the task called. Manus publishes no dollar value for a credit and no per-task dollar figure, before or after the run.

Metered in dollars

$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 →

What Else does differently

Six things, all checkable today.

01The money is in moneyEvery run ends with an itemized receipt in US dollars: the total, the limit that was set, how much of it was used, and the lines under it. Five real receipts are published unedited, including the two runs that came back with nothing.

02The price and the engine come as a pairYou pick the tier — Auto, Fast, Smart or Max — or point a single request at one named model. Because the price follows that choice, no amount on this site is printed without the tier beside it.

03Nothing monthly to carryNo subscription, no seats, no credit bundles. You top up a balance, it never expires, and it only moves when something actually runs.

04A dollar ceiling on handed-off workWork you hand off gets a spending limit in dollars before it starts — $0.15 by default, up to $5 — and going over it makes the run stop and check with you. On a single chat message that same field is not applied yet: a fixed $0.50-per-turn ceiling stops it instead. Read the honest section below.

05It asks before it actsSending, publishing, buying and changing things ask you first, out of the box. Connected apps read only what you allow.

06It keeps going without youHand a job off with a repeat — every 30 minutes through weekly — and it runs on its own. Gmail, Google Drive, Slack, Notion, GitHub and Airtable are among the apps it can work inside.

Side by side · Data as of 30 July 2026

The dimensions that change a decision.

Every Manus cell is quoted from a page Manus publishes; every Else cell is checkable on this site or in the product. Sources and capture dates are filed in the repository, and the honest reading of each row is that it was true on the date above — not for ever.

What you are comparing	Else	Manus
What you pay up front	Nothing. You top up a balance in US dollars	A monthly plan — free with 300 credits a day, or “starting from” $20 a month for “starting from” 4,000 credits, or “starting from” $40 a month for 8,000
What a job is measured in	US dollars	Credits — one unit covering model tokens, virtual machines and third-party APIs
What you know before it starts	The dollar ceiling you set for that run	No pre-run estimate is published; the help centre says the capability does not exist yet
What you know after it finishes	An itemized receipt in dollars, beside the tier that ran	That task's consumption, in credits
Spending cap	Handed-off work only, in dollars — $0.15 by default, up to $5, and checked after the money is spent. On a single message the field is not applied yet	None published
Choosing the engine	Four named tiers, or one named model for a single request	An agent version is selectable; the underlying model is not published
Team accounts	None	Multi-seat, admin dashboard with usage tracking, SSO, audit logs, SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001
Public API	None	A REST API for developers
Apps	Browser only, installable as a web app	iOS and iPadOS, Android, macOS, Windows
Published examples of its own work	Five real runs with receipts — three files, two failures	A curated official collection, sorted into seven areas

Manus's plan prices carry the words “starting from” on the page they are quoted from, and that page was last updated 2026-03-16; Manus's own pricing page publishes no figures at all. Where a cell reads “not published”, that means it was absent from the Manus-owned pages we fetched on 30 July 2026 — it is a statement about what is published, not about what exists.

Where Else falls short

Four reasons to pick Manus instead.

Not hedging — these are measured, and two of them are on our own site already.

Open-web research is where we fail

On 30 July 2026 we ran five jobs on the live product. The two 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, both on the Auto tier. One of them we had deliberately written to be small. Long autonomous web research is the thing Manus is best known for; today it is our weakest job type, and if that is your job you should not start with us.

The spending limit you set is not applied yet

On a single message, the limit you type is sent to us and nothing on our side reads it. What stops the run is a different ceiling you cannot see or change: a fixed $0.50 per turn, checked only after a step has already been billed — so a turn ends at $0.50 plus whatever the step that crossed it cost. On those same five runs the limit was set to $0.15 and four receipts came in between $0.502 and $0.6169, all four on the Auto tier: a tight band just above $0.50, unrelated to the $0.15 we set. On work you hand off the limit is read — but only between steps, on money already spent, and not at all when a run finishes in one go. Manus publishes no cap at all, so this is a comparison of a broken control against no control — not a win.

Nothing for teams, developers or phones

There is no team account, no shared workspace and no view of a colleague's work — everyone runs from their own account and their own balance. There is no public API. There is no App Store or Google Play app; Else runs in a browser and can be installed as a web app. Manus has all three, plus SSO, audit logs and named compliance certifications. If procurement is involved, that gap decides it.

And there is no refund

A run that fails is still billed for the work that actually ran — both failures above were charged. What we do instead: a run that consumed nothing produces no charge at all, a stopped run keeps its partial work and can be resumed, and the receipt itemizes exactly what you paid for. That is honest accounting, not a refund policy, and you should read it as such.

When to use each

They are not the same purchase.

Reach for Manus when…

You want one predictable monthly number rather than a per-job amount. Several people need to work in the same place, with an admin view, SSO and audit logs. You are building on top of an agent and need an API. You want it on a phone or in a desktop app. Or the job is long, wide, open-web research — the thing it has published the most examples of.

Reach for Else when…

You want to see, in dollars, what each job cost — and to know which engine tier that price came from. You would rather pay for four jobs this month than a subscription you might not use. You want a dollar ceiling on a run and to be asked before anything is sent or published. Or you want a job to keep running on a repeat without you.

Questions people actually ask

The five we hear most.

How much do Manus credits cost?

Manus publishes plan prices, not a price per credit. Its help centre lists a free plan with 300 credits a day, and paid plans described as starting from $20 a month for starting from 4,000 credits, and starting from $40 a month for 8,000 — figures we captured on 30 July 2026 from a page last updated 2026-03-16. It publishes no dollar value for a single credit, so what one task costs in money cannot be worked out from what is published. Else has no credits: you top up a balance in US dollars, and each run's receipt shows the dollar amount beside the engine tier that produced it.

Do Manus credits expire or roll over?

We are not going to answer that for you, because we have not verified it, and we do not publish claims about another company's product that we have not checked ourselves. Manus's own help centre is the place to check it. What we can state about Else is that there are no credits at all: you top up a balance in US dollars, it never expires, and the money only moves when something actually runs.

Is Manus worth paying for?

That depends on what you are buying, and for plenty of people it plainly is. Manus has a multi-seat team plan with an admin dashboard, single sign-on, audit logs and named compliance certifications, a public REST API, and apps for iOS, iPadOS, Android, macOS and Windows. Else has none of those. If a predictable monthly bill, a team account, an API or a phone app is what decides it, Manus is the better purchase. If knowing what each individual job cost in dollars is what decides it, that is the thing Else is built around.

Is there a Manus alternative that is pay as you go?

Else is one. There is no subscription and no credit bundle: you top up a balance in US dollars, each run spends 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. What a run costs follows from the engine tier you picked — Auto, Fast, Smart or Max.

How much does an AI agent cost?

For Else we published five real runs from one afternoon rather than an average. On the Auto tier they came in at $0.0819, $0.502, $0.5102, $0.6027 and $0.6169. Read that honestly: three produced a file you can open, and two produced nothing at all and were still charged. A different tier gives a different receipt, which is why we never quote an Else price without naming the tier.

Manus tells you a task took credits.Else tells you it cost $0.0819 on the Auto tier.