Manus Review

Manus went from an invitation code trading for thousands of dollars on the secondary market to a product with a $125 million revenue run rate inside nine months, which is a strange arc for a company most people still cannot name. The idea is simple and the execution is the hard part: give the model a virtual computer and let it use one. It browses, writes and runs code, edits files, builds the slide deck or the scraper or the research memo, and hands back something finished rather than a plan for something finished.

Most of 2026 went on corporate drama rather than product. Meta announced an acquisition in December 2025, Chinese regulators opened a review in January, the National Development and Reform Commission blocked the deal on April 27, Meta severed ties on June 15, and Manus resumed independent operations on August 11. That the release cadence survived all of that says something: scheduled tasks and new connectors shipped in May while the lawyers argued. The stable build is still Manus 1.6 from December 15, 2025.

The reservation is the meter, and it is a serious one. Credits do not roll over, one long autonomous run can eat a day's allowance in an afternoon, and nobody can tell in advance what a given task will cost, which turns budgeting into guesswork and is why the ease of use grade is the lowest of the set. The free tier refreshes 300 credits a day on a lighter model, enough to learn whether the thing suits the work. Paid plans run $20, $40 and $200 a month for 4,000, 8,000 and 40,000 credits.