Bottom line: Manus is a general-purpose AI agent that does the work instead of just describing it — it browses the web, runs code in a cloud sandbox, and hands back finished reports, slides, spreadsheets, and even small websites. The free plan is real and usable: 300 credits refreshed every day at $0. But those daily credits expire at midnight UTC, only work in Lite mode, and quietly stop refreshing after 1,500 credits in a month. Used daily in small doses, the free plan is genuinely useful. Saved up for one big project, it is not.
What is Manus?
Manus (from Butterfly Effect, the Singapore-based team behind the Monica assistant) is an autonomous AI agent. You describe an outcome — research a market, build a comparison spreadsheet, draft a slide deck, create a simple website — and Manus plans the steps and executes them in its own cloud environment, using a browser, a file system, and code execution. Its site also lists AI slides, image and music generation, video tools, a Wide Research mode for parallel research, and a Slack integration. It is a very different product from a chatbot: if you would rather build your own agent instead of renting one, see our reviews of Dify, Voiceflow, and Botpress.
What is actually free on Manus?
| Plan | Price | Credits | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 300 daily refresh credits | Lite mode only; 1,500 credits/month cap from daily refresh; 1 concurrent task |
| Standard | $20/mo | 4,000/month | Full agent modes; 20 concurrent tasks |
| Customizable | $40/mo | 8,000/month | More volume, same rate per credit |
| Extended | $200/mo | 40,000/month | Heaviest tier on the public pricing page |
Annual billing takes about 17% off the paid tiers. Credits pay for three things, per Manus’s own help center: the model tokens used to plan and write, the virtual machines that browse and run code, and third-party APIs the task calls. Credits are only consumed while a task is actively processing — chatting in plain chat mode, and storing or deploying finished outputs, costs nothing.
What the pricing page doesn’t make obvious
This is the part most coverage of Manus misses, and it is all in Manus’s own Help Center. First, free users have a daily refreshed free credit usage limit of 1,500 credits per month: once you have used 1,500 daily credits in a month, the daily refresh stops until the next cycle — so the free plan is effectively five full days of credits per month, not thirty. Second, you must log in each day to claim the 300 credits, they are valid for that day only, they reset at 00:00 UTC, and they do not accumulate — 100 leftover credits simply disappear. Third, daily credits can only be used in Manus 2.0 Lite mode; if you are in the full or Max mode, the daily credits won’t appear in your balance at all. Paid plan credits have the same no-rollover rule: unused monthly credits are cleared at each refresh.
Pros and cons of the Manus free plan
Pros
- A real agent, not a demo: free credits run actual multi-step tasks that produce files and deliverables.
- 300 credits a day is enough for a small research task, a short deck, or a data cleanup on most days.
- No credit card needed to start, and chat mode costs no credits at all.
- Credits are only burned during active processing, not for storage or idle time.
Cons
- The 1,500-credit monthly cap on daily credits is buried in a help article, not shown on the pricing page.
- Daily credits work only in Lite mode — you never see the full-strength agent for free.
- There is no reliable cost estimate before a task runs, and a long task can eat a whole day’s credits in one go.
- One concurrent task on free, versus 20 on paid plans.
Who is Manus free best for?
Manus free is best for professionals and students with a steady trickle of small, well-defined jobs: a competitor scan today, a cleaned-up spreadsheet tomorrow, a first-draft deck on Friday. It is a poor fit for one big monthly project, because the credits cannot be saved up, and a poor fit for anyone who needs the strongest model on every task. If your work is mostly questions and writing rather than finished deliverables, a free chatbot will serve you better; if you want an agent that hands back files, this is currently the most generous free way to try one.
Manus free plan: frequently asked questions
Is Manus really free?
Yes. The Free plan costs $0 and includes 300 daily refresh credits, claimed by logging in each day, with no monthly credit pool.
Do Manus daily credits roll over?
No. Daily credits reset to 300 at 00:00 UTC and unused credits are removed. Manus’s help center also caps free daily-credit use at 1,500 credits per month.
Why don’t my daily credits show up?
Daily refresh credits can only be used in Manus 2.0 Lite mode. In the full or Max modes they do not appear in your usable balance.
How much does Manus cost after the free plan?
Paid plans run $20/month for 4,000 credits, $40/month for 8,000 credits, and $200/month for 40,000 credits, with about 17% off on annual billing.