Is OpenBot really free?

Yes. OpenBot is open source: the code is public and installing it costs nothing. At most you pay for hosting if you put it on a server, often a few euros a month. Manus, on the other hand, costs €17 a month.

Do I need to code to install OpenBot?

No. The level is advanced and the install takes about 45 minutes with the prompt from the page: Claude does the work, you answer its questions.

How is it different from Manus?

OpenBot does most of what Manus does, without a subscription, and your data stays with you. The point by point comparison is on the page.

Yes. With an open source tool installed on your side, your files stay on your machine or your server. Nobody can close your account or change the price.

Free alternative

Free alternative to Manus

Manus costs €17 a month. OpenBot does the same job for free, in open source: you install it on your machine or a small server, and you stop paying.

Public entry price, taken from Manus’s website (manus.im). Over a year, that is €204 that stays in your pocket.

What replaces Manus

The main alternative

OpenBot

🔴 Advanced⏱️ ~45 min to installSave €86/mo

OpenBot gives you AI coworkers you can hand real work to. Each one gets its own computer: a Chromium browser with its own logins, its own file space, and only the tools you grant it. You watch it work on its own screen, take the wheel when it reaches something it should not do alone, then hand it back. That is precisely the promise of the Grok Bot xAI launched six days earlier, with two differences: this one runs on your machine, and it does not ask the €86 a month SuperGrok Plus costs. It even adds what the other one does not show: every action goes through a gateway that approves it before it happens and writes it to an audit log after. That is the difference between an agent that can touch your tools and an agent you can let near them.

Loucash’s verdict on OpenBot

7/10

Careful, this one is not like the other cards: it came out only days ago, and its authors state plainly that it is alpha, with bugs to expect. I am putting it in the library anyway for one simple reason: xAI shipped Grok Bot six days earlier and it only opens up in SuperGrok Plus, the €86 a month tier. Here you get the same promise by cloning a repository. And OpenBot adds what xAI does not show: a gateway that approves every move before it happens and keeps a record of it. Two things to know before you start, which the landing page does not say loudly enough. You need a CopilotKit Intelligence account on top of the software: the free tier is enough to try, and you can host it yourself, but you depend on an outside piece. And above all, free does not mean costless: the tool charges nothing, but every action burns tokens at OpenAI or Anthropic. An agent working in a browser burns a lot of them. Watch your bill the first few days. My advice: install it to understand where the craft is heading, play with it on tasks without consequences, but put nothing serious on it until it leaves alpha.

Who it is for: You saw xAI's Grok Bot go by and want the same thing without paying €86 a month, accepting you will tinker with a young tool.

See the full page →See the tool ↗

The prompt that installs OpenBot

Paste this prompt into Claude: it checks the repository, asks you its questions and installs the tool step by step.

Installe OpenBot sur ma machine (la plateforme open source d'agents IA auto-hébergée, repo GitHub CopilotKit/OpenBot). Clone le dépôt github.com/CopilotKit/OpenBot, installe Bun s'il n'est pas déjà là, copie le fichier .env.example vers .env, puis guide-moi pour remplir les clés demandées : INTELLIGENCE_API_KEY et COPILOTKIT_LICENSE_TOKEN via la commande copilotkit login, ma clé de modèle, et génère un KEY_ENCRYPTION_KEY avec openssl. Lance ensuite scripts/start.sh et vérifie que l'interface répond sur http://localhost:3010. Attention : ce projet est en version alpha, si une étape casse dis-le-moi clairement au lieu de contourner. Explique chaque étape simplement, je débute.

Review the GitHub repository and check whether it is safe to install given my machine and my infrastructure. Ask me as many questions as possible, using widgets, to clarify my request and be as precise as you can.

Frequently asked questions

Is OpenBot really free?: Yes. OpenBot is open source: the code is public and installing it costs nothing. At most you pay for hosting if you put it on a server, often a few euros a month. Manus, on the other hand, costs €17 a month.
Do I need to code to install OpenBot?: No. The level is advanced and the install takes about 45 minutes with the prompt from the page: Claude does the work, you answer its questions.
How is it different from Manus?: OpenBot does most of what Manus does, without a subscription, and your data stays with you. The point by point comparison is on the page.
Do I own my data?: Yes. With an open source tool installed on your side, your files stay on your machine or your server. Nobody can close your account or change the price.