General AI agent

Manus in Best AI for Deep Research

Answer in brief

General AI agent that runs research as cloud tasks, with a Wide Research mode that fans out to hundreds of sub-agents. Its own GAIA results are vendor-reported.

Best for

Broad, multi-entity research and tasks that mix browsing, files and code

Pricing

Manus lists a free plan, paid plans and a team plan. The official plans page we read showed no dollar amounts or credit counts, so third-party guides are the only source for a paid entry price of about $20 a month for about 4,000 credits. Research task costs vary widely by complexity, and add-on credits do not expire, according to the Manus FAQ.

What it covers

Manus runs each task in a cloud virtual machine with browser, code and internet access. Wide Research splits a request into many sub-tasks, each with its own agent, and a main agent gathers the results. Its pages do not name a set of structured public datasets.

Citations and verification

Its product pages do not describe a citation or source-link format for Wide Research. Independent reviewers report omitted sources, invented citations and misattributed quotes in some tests, so each cited claim needs a manual check.

API

Manus publishes a v2 API with a credit usage history endpoint at https://open.manus.ai/docs/v2/usage.list.md. Sources describe API access inconsistently, so confirm plan terms before building on it.

Strengths and limitations

Strengths

Handles broad, multi-entity jobs through Wide Research
Runs long tasks in a cloud VM with browser and code tools
Free plan with limited monthly credits, per the official docs

Limitations

Credit use per research task is hard to predict
Reviewers report uneven citation accuracy
Wide Research was first available to Pro users, with gradual rollout to lower tiers

Third-party ratings

Not found

Dated facts

2025: Manus's own chart reported 86.5% on GAIA level 1 against 74.3% for OpenAI, a vendor-reported figure cited by DataCamp.
Early 2026: the Manus 1.6 release added Chat Mode and Wide Research, per a third-party review.
As of 2026-11-08, the official plans page gives Free, Pro and Team tiers without prices.

Manus or Hyperresearch?

Choose Manus for broad, multi-entity research and tasks that mix browsing, files and code. For sourced research where every figure has to hold up, Hyperresearch is our editorial choice: it scored 77.7 on DRACO in our own run and checks each cited figure against its source.

Sources for this entry

Vendor descriptions are attributed to the vendor. Prices change; confirm with each vendor.

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Cite this entry

Best AI for Deep Research. “Manus in Best AI for Deep Research.” Hyperresearch reference, reviewed 8 November 2026.
https://bestaifordeepresearch.com/resources/manus/