Manus vs OpenClaw
Manus (Butterfly Effect Pte. Ltd. (Manus AI), Singapore) and OpenClaw (OpenClaw Foundation (nonprofit); created by Peter Steinberger) side by side on public data, as of Oct 6, 2026.
OpenClaw shipped 20 stable releases in the past 90 days.
Side-by-side numbers
| Metric | Manus | OpenClaw |
|---|---|---|
| Pulse Score | 51 | 80 |
| Overall rank | #37 | #2 |
| Downloads, last 7 days | — | 4.5M |
| Downloads, 7-day change | — | up 34.8% |
| Downloads, 30-day change | — | up 28.5% |
| VS Code installs | — | — |
| Marketplace rating | 4.7 / 5 (38,671) | 3.4 / 5 (62) |
| GitHub stars | — | 391K |
| Homebrew installs, 30 days | 42 | 542 |
| Hacker News mentions, 30 days | 8 | 215 |
| Latest stable release | — | 2026.9.8 · 3d ago |
| Stable releases, 90 days | 20 | |
| Terminal-Bench (best run) | — | — |
| Price | Free + $20/mo | Free (OSS) |
| License | Proprietary | MIT |
| First released | March 2025 | November 2025 |
| Interfaces | Web, Desktop, Mobile, Browser extension, API | Messaging apps, CLI, Desktop, Mobile |
| Models | Manus 2.0 model tiers (Max, standard, Lite); underlying third-party LLMs are not publicly specified | Model-agnostic: Claude, OpenAI Codex/GPT, DeepSeek and local models via plugins |
Trends
Manus
General-purpose autonomous agent that plans and runs multi-step tasks in a cloud sandbox, such as research, slides, websites and data analysis, with web, desktop, mobile and browser-extension clients. Manus 2.0, announced in September 2026, added a new agent harness, dedicated cloud computers and a desktop studio.
Pricing: Free plan: 300 daily credits (Chat Mode and Manus 2.0 Lite in Agent Mode). Pro from $20/month (4,000 credits) and from $40/month (8,000 credits, 7-day trial), 17% off with annual billing; Team from $20 per seat/month.
OpenClaw
Open-source personal AI assistant that runs on the user's own machine as a gateway and works through chat apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord and iMessage, with a skills system and swappable model plugins. It also ships native apps for macOS, iOS, Android and Windows.
Pricing: Free and open source (MIT) with no paid tier, hosted service or token; users pay their chosen model providers.
Latest release 2026.9.8:
- Release notes — formatted for people, with expandable sections.
- Changelog — plain Markdown for AI agents and tools.
- npm package
- registry tarball