Manus

Manus is what founders usually picture when they say 'AI agent': you describe an outcome — research these 40 potential stockists and build me a spreadsheet with contact details, turn this data into a slide deck, build a simple website for the new service — and Manus plans the steps, works inside its own virtual computer, browses, writes, codes and assembles the deliverable while you do something else. For a solo operator that makes it useful for the chunky, occasional jobs that eat an afternoon: wide research sweeps, competitor teardowns, first-draft websites, presentations, data cleanup and report building. Scheduled tasks and the ability to run many tasks concurrently mean you can queue background work — a weekly market scan, a recurring report — rather than babysitting one chat. It also generates slides, images, video and design assets, which covers a lot of the small creative jobs a one-person business otherwise outsources piecemeal. The pricing model is the main thing to understand before you commit: everything runs on credits, consumption depends on a task's complexity and duration, and Manus does not publish what a given job will cost in advance. A $20 plan buys 4,000 monthly credits plus a daily refresh, but whether that is a month of work or a week depends entirely on how heavy your tasks are, so most solo users should run their real workload on the free tier and watch the burn rate before paying. Autonomy also cuts both ways — long runs can wander, and results need checking like any contractor's first draft.

Credit-based: free plan with 300 credits refreshed daily; Pro starts at $20/month for 4,000 credits and scales by credit bundle to $200/month for 40,000 credits, with 17% off annual billing.