Manus AI
Ranked 6 of 26 AI agents by recommenders
Recommended for handling multi-step tasks like research, reports and slide decks. Critics call it a thin wrapper over other models with overstated marketing.
Recommended for handling multi-step tasks like research, reports and slide decks. Critics call it a thin wrapper over other models with overstated marketing.
71 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 41
- criticize it
- 30
- approval share
- 58%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 41 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Strong multi-step agent task completion
“Manus had a better approach than some of the competitors of the space, allowing for far more agentic flows”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “ManusAI Joins Meta” “Manus is a very capable agent for daily non-coding tasks. Their cron job ability also shined out”
Comment from 11 Aug 2026 in “Manus will return to operating as an independent company” “Manus gets shit done, whereas I have to constantly babysit other tools.”
Comment from 12 Aug 2026 in “Manus will return to operating as an independent company” - Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “ManusAI Joins Meta”
- Comment from 29 Dec 2025 in “ManusAI Joins Meta”
Strong web research and deep dives
“Manus was great, used it for months for exploring ideas, making reports and such.”
Comment from 11 May 2026 in “Ask HN: Which LLM are you using to evaluate your ideas?” “Deep Research quite good in terms of browsing the web, better than Gemini's”
Comment from 11 Aug 2026 in “Manus will return to operating as an independent company” “It's great for like researching deep on a topic.”
Comment from 11 Aug 2026 in “Manus will return to operating as an independent company” Impressive early results ahead of rivals
“It was the best product in its area from the beginning, eclipsing anything US produced prior to it”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “ManusAI Joins Meta” “Manus was pretty damn good at delivering impressive results well before other providers.”
Comment from 29 Dec 2025 in “ManusAI Joins Meta” “Manus at the time is break through result.”
Comment from 31 Dec 2025 in “ManusAI Joins Meta” - Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “ManusAI Joins Meta”
Good at making presentations
“it's hard to find a rival when it comes to making PPTs”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “ManusAI Joins Meta” “Manus seems to deliver more organised results.”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “ManusAI Joins Meta”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Seen as thin wrapper on Claude
“it quickly became a joke in about two weeks after it became obvious that they were a thin layer on top of Claude and all marketing”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “ManusAI Joins Meta” “An API wrapper isn’t some new technology. You get nothing from it.”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “ManusAI Joins Meta” “Definitely feels like a Claude wrapped with a lot of marketing.”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “ManusAI Joins Meta” Marketing outpaces technical substance
“It was never a breakthrough of any kind, especially not the "half of all office work are now obsolete" kind they tried to claim.”
Comment from 31 Dec 2025 in “ManusAI Joins Meta” “Their marketing skills and hyping skills are far superior to their technical skils”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “ManusAI Joins Meta” “Manus is particularly egregious in their false advertising”
Comment from 31 Dec 2025 in “ManusAI Joins Meta” Depends on underlying models changing
“the latest models no longer have these gaps and the entire premise of having a unique product focus on this area is no longer relevant”
Comment from 11 Aug 2026 in “Manus will return to operating as an independent company” “A service precariously sitting on top of a LLM that can change any minute now.”
Comment from 28 Dec 2025 in “Manus AI 100M USD ARR”
Other AI agents people recommend
The four most recommended other AI agents, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenClaw | 776 | 975 | 44% | 10 | 1 mo49 owners | — |
| Muse by Meta | 147 | 232 | 39% | 6 | 1 mo4 owners | — |
| Hermes Agent by Nous Research | 84 | 28 | 75% | 9 | 1 mo8 owners | Approved |
| Clawdbot | 69 | 99 | 41% | 3 | 1 mo7 owners | — |
| Manus AIThis page | 41 | 30 | 58% | 8 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 75 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Manus gets shit done, whereas I have to constantly babysit other tools.”
“Manus is a very capable agent for daily non-coding tasks. Their cron job ability also shined out”
“the latest models no longer have these gaps and the entire premise of having a unique product focus on this area is no longer relevant”
“It's great for like researching deep on a topic.”
“Deep Research quite good in terms of browsing the web, better than Gemini's”
“the speed of task completion was very slow”
“I find the built in harness (database, browser use, etc.) quite good.”
“Technically a bunch of countries don't allow data to be with Manus aka Chinese cloud services.”
“it was vibe-coded using Manus. It saves them a lot of time”
“Manus was great, used it for months for exploring ideas, making reports and such.”
“the best agent with hundreds of millions in ARR should be worth more”
“As a Manus user, I am liking the product.”
“they made bets on instagram, whatsapp and now manus and are great 2nd, 3rd and 4th acts”
“surprised to still feel a similar level of 'fatigue'”
“If you nailed this properly, you'd have the Manus effect”
“If you have used Manus or connected your own CF, GCP, AWS, etc. you see how easy it could be”
“It was never a breakthrough of any kind, especially not the "half of all office work are now obsolete" kind they tried to claim.”
“Manus at the time is break through result.”
“Manus is particularly egregious in their false advertising”
“Manus had a better approach than some of the competitors of the space, allowing for far more agentic flows”
“manus is top tier by any measure in the startup scene”
“had much better results than ChatGPT”
“My verdict is it is better than ChatGPT Atlas for the agent mode, so I see use cases for it.”
“Pretty impressive for a product that's 9 months old.”
“Manus seems to deliver more organised results.”
“An API wrapper isn’t some new technology. You get nothing from it.”
“it quickly became a joke in about two weeks after it became obvious that they were a thin layer on top of Claude and all marketing”
“it's hard to find a rival when it comes to making PPTs”
“It was the best product in its area from the beginning, eclipsing anything US produced prior to it”
“Their marketing skills and hyping skills are far superior to their technical skils”
“Manus has been the best agent for turning text into work”
“Definitely feels like a Claude wrapped with a lot of marketing.”
“Manus is currently SOTA on the Remote Labor Index (RLI) benchmark”
“Insanely overpriced versus over deep research products”
“Manus was the best actual agent for my money.”
“Manus was pretty damn good at delivering impressive results well before other providers.”
“A service precariously sitting on top of a LLM that can change any minute now.”
“I like Manus's suggested follow-up questions.”
“Manus and others are great at the 'Happy Path'. But when a 3-hour multi-step task hits a 503 error on step 47, does the agent gracefully recover”
“I can inspect the reasoning traces and edit the Agents/Skills with the Manus agent.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.