Kortix vs Manus: an open-source system you own or a hosted agent you rent?

Manus is a hosted AI agent that finishes real work, and Kortix is the open-source system you run yourself. Both take a goal and return deliverables. The difference is what your team keeps afterward, because the work Manus produces and the machinery that produced it live in Manus's cloud, while Kortix keeps them in a git repo you own. This is the head-to-head on what each one is, the four things a team cannot keep on Manus, and which one to pick.

What Manus is good at

Manus is a hosted, general-purpose AI agent that takes a goal in plain language and executes it, planning the steps and returning a finished deliverable such as a slide deck, a website or a report (Manus). It runs in Manus's cloud, on a model Manus selects, and you sign in, spend credits and collect the output in the app. There is no self-host path published.

• It operates a browser. Manus Browser Operator runs inside your current browser session and uses your existing logins and active tabs, so it reaches sites behind a sign-in with no integration to build (Browser Operator).
• Wide Research scales one prompt. The main agent breaks a request into hundreds of independent sub-tasks, gives each its own agent and fresh context, and then synthesizes the results (Wide Research).
• It ships output in many formats. Slides, websites, mobile apps, games, design, images, video and music come out of the same product (Manus features).
• It reaches the tools a team already uses. Manus connects apps and custom MCP servers, takes actions across 8,000+ apps, and can keep agents and bots running on a schedule (Manus features).
• The Team plan is built for groups. Credits pool across seats, projects and skills are shared, and the plan adds admin analytics, access control, SSO and audit logs (Manus for Teams).

Manus does this well. For one person or a small team that wants a capable agent and no infrastructure to run, the polish and the credit model are a strong deal.

Where a hosted agent stops for a team

A hosted product gives you an account. The system that does the work stays on the vendor's side, and four of its parts are the ones a company tends to want for itself.

• Your configuration is not a file. How the agent works lives in Manus's product, not in a repo your team reads and diffs.
• The model is not yours to swap. Manus selects the model for each task, so that choice is theirs to change (Manus for Teams).
• There is no review gate. Work arrives as a deliverable you can replay and comment on, not a diff a second person approves before it counts.
• The infrastructure is theirs. There is no version of Manus you run in your own VPC or on your own network.

These are the boundaries of a hosted product. They surface when the work belongs to a company instead of one person.

What Kortix gives a team instead

Kortix is the open-source AI Operating System: your agents, their skills, your company memory and every connector live as files in one git repo you own, and every session runs on its own cloud computer (Kortix docs). Those four parts stay on your side.

# kortix.yaml
agents:
  research-brief:
    file: agents/research-brief.md
    connectors: [slack, notion]
triggers:
  - slug: weekly-scan
    type: cron
    cron: '0 8 * * 1'
    prompt: Run the weekly competitor scan and open a change request.

• One repo is the company. Agents and skills are Markdown, memory is files, and connectors and triggers are declared in kortix.yaml, so the whole system is text a person reads and an agent edits.
• A sandbox and a branch per session. Each session has its own isolated machine and branch, and thousands run in parallel on one config.
• A gate every time. Session work reaches main through a change request, and merge is default-deny for agents, so a person reads the diff before it lands.
• Any model, your keys. Pick a model per agent, per session or per message: any provider with your own keys, or the ChatGPT plan you already pay for.
• Run it where the data has to live. Kortix Cloud, your VPC or your own on-prem network. Self-host is free.
• Reach and governance. Kortix connects 3,000+ apps in a click, plus MCP, OpenAPI, Postman, GraphQL and raw HTTP, with per-resource permissions for people and agents.

Kortix is open source: read the code, fork it, audit it. The source is at Kortix on GitHub.

On price, both products sell credits. Kortix Free is $0 with 200 credits a month and one project, and the team plan is $40 per seat per month with 2,500 credits per seat, pooled (Kortix pricing, checked October 2026). Manus Team starts from US$20 per seat per month or US$200 per seat per year, on a base of 4,000 credits per seat per month (Manus for Teams, checked October 2026). The larger difference is what the credits buy: a Manus credit pays for a hosted task, while a Kortix credit pays for sandbox compute inside a system your team already owns.

Where Manus is the better pick

Manus is the better pick when you want a capable agent and no setup. If you are one person or a small team finishing research, a deck, a site or a browsing task, and you do not need to run or audit the agent yourself, Manus's browser operator and format coverage make it a reasonable choice. Nothing asks you to run a server, and the browser operator reaches a site behind a login without an integration. For finished output with no infrastructure, Manus is strong.

Side by side

When to pick which

Manus is the right start for one person or a small team that wants finished output with nothing to run. Kortix is the one for a company that needs a single system whose agents, memory and connectors live in a repo it owns, with every change reviewed before it lands.

The wider field of hosted-agent alternatives is in the open-source Manus alternatives roundup. To see how Kortix compares with a coding-agent harness, read Kortix vs OpenHands.

Own the agent workforce instead of renting one. Kortix is free to start and free to self-host. Get started with Kortix.