Lindy vs Manus: pricing, features and which to choose

Lindy is a hosted AI assistant and team agent made by the company founded by Flo Crivello. The product launched in March 2023 as an assistant for calendars, email, travel, prospecting, and meeting summaries, then expanded into AI employees and a shared teammate. Lindy says people can use it privately through email, iMessage, Slack DMs, and the web app, while teams can mention it in shared Slack channels. Its current product includes persistent workspace context, shared meetings and files, scheduled routines, and connected workplace tools. Lindy is closed source and hosted by the vendor. Its history includes an aborted Meta acquisition and a return to independent operation on September 1, 2026. The company does not publish a current employee count or funding total.

A typical Lindy workflow starts by connecting an inbox, calendar, meeting service, CRM, or another supported tool. A user can request inbox triage, a meeting brief, a draft reply, a CRM update, or a recurring report. In Slack, teammates mention Lindy in a channel or thread and follow the work there. Lindy can record meetings, create notes, organize shared folders, answer questions about earlier calls, and run scheduled routines such as daily briefs. The service supports more than 1,500 integrations according to its current product pages, plus hosted MCP servers and direct API credentials. Reads occur without approval, while outside actions can wait for approval in Slack. Administrators can set workspace connections, spend caps, and action guardrails for shared work.

Lindy's main tradeoff is variable credit consumption combined with per-seat billing. A colleague who uses Lindy, including through a Slack mention, can require a paid seat, and a large task can consume much of an allocation. Monthly credits stop when the pool is empty, although administrators can buy top-ups. Reclaim AI focuses more closely on calendar and time planning, while Lindy covers broader workplace tools and Slack-based team work. Zapier Agents emphasizes configurable automation across app connections, whereas Lindy emphasizes conversational delegation, meetings, memory, and approvals. Microsoft Copilot Studio is more closely tied to Microsoft's enterprise stack and governance controls. Pick Lindy if your work spans inboxes, meetings, Slack, and several business tools, and you accept hosted per-seat billing.

Manus is a general AI agent made by Butterfly Effect Pte. Ltd., the Singapore company behind the service. Butterfly Effect was founded in Beijing in 2022 by Xiao Hong, Yichao Ji, and Tao Zhang, then moved its headquarters and core team to Singapore in mid-2025. Manus reportedly had millions of users and more than $100 million in annual recurring revenue by December 2025. Meta announced an approximately $2 billion acquisition that month, but China ordered the transaction unwound on April 27, 2026. Manus formally resumed independent operations on September 1, 2026, with its founding team continuing to lead the company. A September 2026 report said Manus was discussing a $500 million fundraise at a $4 billion valuation, although that financing was not presented as completed.

Manus turns a natural-language goal into a multi-step task that runs in a cloud computer. A typical project can include web research, browser actions, file uploads, document creation, spreadsheet work, slide generation, website building, code, or deployment. Projects group related work, while connectors bring outside services into tasks. Scheduled Automations can run on a schedule, and the 2.0 release adds triggers for events such as new email, advertising changes, calendar events, Slack messages, or Notion updates. Manus Studio organizes documents, spreadsheets, PDFs, slides, websites, code, games, and video work. Its API creates and manages tasks, sends follow-up messages, uploads files, receives webhooks, and supports built-in or custom skills.

Manus has a broad task surface, but its credit pricing makes the cost of a finished task difficult to predict. Credits do not roll over, and different projects consume different amounts. ChatGPT is closer to a conversational assistant and model-access product, while Manus centers on delegated tasks that return files, sites, or reports. Claude emphasizes chat, writing, and coding workflows. Replit focuses more narrowly on software projects and repository-style development, while Manus covers research, documents, slides, media, and applications. The privacy policy permits processing user content to deliver and improve services, and Team includes a training opt-out. Pick Manus if you want one workspace for varied, multi-step deliverables and accept credit-based billing.