Manus Pricing 2026: Is Manus Free, What Credits Cost, and Where Startups Actually Save
How Manus charges for its general-purpose AI agent, what the free tier gives you, how a task turns into a credit bill, and why the real startup savings are in the models Manus calls rather than the Manus plan itself.
Manus plans (September 2026)
Manus has restructured its plans more than once since launch. The table shows the current plan shape; confirm exact prices and credit allowances on manus.im/pricing before you subscribe.
| Plan | Price | Credits | Concurrent tasks | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Daily allowance (check current amount) | 1 | Full agent with the standard model, daily refreshing credits, community support. Enough for a few short tasks a day. |
| Basic | Check current (about $19 / month) | Monthly pool (about 1,900) | 2 | Everything in Free plus a larger pool, more concurrent tasks, and priority access when the service is busy. |
| Plus | Check current (about $39 / month) | Monthly pool (about 3,900) | 5 | Higher pool and concurrency, scheduled tasks, longer-running jobs. The plan most regular users are on. |
| Pro | Check current (about $199 / month) | Monthly pool (about 19,900) | 10 | The largest self-serve pool, highest concurrency, priority during peak demand, early access to new agent capabilities. |
| Team | Per seat, check current | Pooled across the team | Per seat | Shared workspace, centralised billing, admin controls. Contact Manus for larger deployments. |
Credits reset monthly on paid plans and daily on Free. Manus has previously sold top-up credit packs for users who run out before the reset; check whether those are still available on your plan.
How Manus credits are spent
Manus is a general-purpose agent: you give it a goal and it plans, browses, writes and runs code, reads files, and produces an output. It charges for that work in credits, and the number depends on three things:
- How many steps the task takes. A single-answer question is a handful of credits. A research report that visits twenty pages and synthesises them is dozens of steps and costs accordingly.
- How long the task runs. Runtime on the agent's virtual machine is part of the cost. Tasks that install dependencies, run scrapers, or wait on slow websites cost more than tasks that finish in a minute.
- Which model it uses. Manus orchestrates frontier models from Anthropic and others. Heavier reasoning tasks route to more expensive models and consume credits faster.
The practical consequence: the same prompt can cost very different amounts depending on what the agent decides to do. Scope tasks tightly. "Find the pricing page for these five companies and put the monthly price in a table" is far cheaper than "research the AI agent market", and the output is more useful.
The free daily allowance is designed to let you try Manus properly, and it does. It is not designed to replace a paid plan: a couple of substantial tasks will use it up.
Is Manus worth paying for?
Stay on Free if…
You use Manus a few times a week for bounded tasks: a competitive summary, a data clean-up, a first draft of a document. The daily allowance covers that.
Basic or Plus if…
Manus has become part of how you work. Plus is the sensible default: the larger pool, more concurrent tasks and scheduled jobs are the features that turn Manus from a toy into a tool.
Pro if…
You run many long tasks in parallel every day and hit Plus's ceiling. At roughly ten times the Basic price it only makes sense if you are replacing real hours of work.
The startup answer
If you are building an agent product rather than using one, Manus is the wrong line item. You want model credits and infrastructure, both of which have startup programs. See the next section.
For founders
Where startups actually save on Manus
Manus does not run a startup credit program and there is no Manus listing in our directory. Treat a Manus subscription as a per-person productivity cost, like a Notion or Cursor seat, and keep it to the people who use it daily.
The fine print
The costs that scale are underneath. Manus, like every general-purpose agent, is a planning loop on top of frontier models and a sandboxed machine. If you are building your own agent product, that is what you are paying for, and it is exactly what the startup programs fund:
The whole list of AI programs is in the AI startup credits hub. A seed-stage agent startup can typically fund a year of model and compute usage from those three lines before paying anyone.
Claude for Startups
Up to $100,000
- $25,000 to $100,000+ in Claude API credits (partner tier)
- Priority rate limits and early access to new models
- Access to Claude Code, Claude API, Managed Agents and Cowork
Step by step: getting the most from Manus credits
For users on Free or a paid plan. The first three cost nothing.
-
1
Scope every task to a deliverable
Tell Manus exactly what the output should be (a table with these columns, a 200-word summary, a CSV). Open-ended research prompts are the most common way to burn a day's credits on one task. -
2
Give it the inputs instead of making it find them
Upload the files or paste the URLs. Every page the agent has to search for and load is steps and runtime you are paying for. -
3
Use the free daily allowance for small tasks and batch the big ones
Run short lookups on the daily credits. Save the large multi-step jobs for a paid plan reset, or spread them across days. -
4
If you are building an agent product, move to model credits
Apply for Claude for Startups and OpenAI for Startups. Both are self-serve and give you the models Manus runs on, without the per-task markup. -
5
Re-check the plan quarterly
Manus changes plan names, prices and credit allowances often. Compare what you are paying against what you use, and downgrade if the pool is going unused.
Using Manus vs building on credits: the math
For a two-person startup that runs about 60 substantial agent tasks a month, comparing "use Manus" against "build a narrow agent on startup credits".
| Route | Year-one cost | What it covers | Where it breaks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manus Free | $0 | A few small tasks a day | Substantial tasks exhaust the daily allowance quickly. |
| Manus Plus x2 | Roughly $940 | Two people running Manus daily with scheduled tasks | Credits are per person; heavy months need top-ups. Price and pool subject to change. |
| Manus Pro x2 | Roughly $4,800 | Heavy parallel use | Expensive if only one founder is a heavy user. |
| Own agent on Claude / OpenAI startup credits | $0 model usage until credits run out | A narrow agent tuned to your workflow, on funded models and compute | Engineering time to build and maintain it. Credits expire. |
For internal productivity, a Manus Plus seat or two is cheaper than building. For a product, build on the credits.
Questions founders ask
Is Manus free?
How much does Manus cost?
How do Manus credits work?
How do I get free Manus credits?
Does Manus have a startup program?
What is the difference between Manus Plus and Pro?
Is Manus cheaper than building my own agent?
Related guides
Claude pricing
The models under most agent products, and the startup program.
Claude API pricing
Per-token rates if you build your own agent.
OpenAI API pricing
GPT model rates and OpenAI startup credits.
Perplexity Pro free
Another agentic research tool, and how to get it free.
Anthropic startup credits
Eligibility and how to apply for Claude credits.
All AI startup credits
Every AI credit program in the directory.
