Meta’s Manus AI simply added a nifty OpenClaw trick

From one perspective, the viral OpenClaw AI device and Meta’s Manus AI service couldn’t be extra completely different. One is open-source, the opposite is a closed industrial product. One runs in your native {hardware}, the opposite runs within the cloud. One could be operated without spending a dime with the proper {hardware}, whereas the opposite’s going to value you.

Checked out from a distinct angle, OpenClaw and Manus AI can carry out lots of the identical methods, together with deploying AI brokers to do your bidding, organizing your inbox, constructing apps from the only of prompts, and even searching the net for you.

Now Manus AI has a brand new trick up its sleeves that makes it much more like OpenClaw: an integration with Telegram, that means you may chat with Manus in your cellphone utilizing the favored cellular app.

The power to make use of customary social messaging apps is among the killer options of OpenClaw, the open-source AI sensation whose creator was simply snapped up by OpenAI. 

OpenClaw offers you quite a lot of “social” channels for chatting together with your private agent. Along with Telegram, OpenClaw additionally helps WhatsApp, Discord, iMessage, and Slack.

For now, Telegram is the one such social channel that works with Manus, with the corporate advertising the function as “Manus Brokers.” Extra platforms are “coming quickly,” Manus says. 

You may direct your Manus Agent in Telegram to carry out such multi-step tasking as working deep analysis studies, examine the inboxes of your related e-mail accounts, and even construct apps, with the agent spawning sub-agents if the necessity arises.

Manus AI vs OpenClaw

That every one sounds very OpenClaw-like, and certainly, on a floor degree, Manus AI feels so much like OpenClaw within the cloud.

But as I discussed earlier, Manus AI and OpenClaw are additionally very completely different, beginning with the truth that Manus AI was acquired by Meta in December 2025.

Based in 2022 in Beijing earlier than transferring to Singapore final 12 months, Manus AI has all the time been a industrial enterprise, with roots within the monetary and journey sectors earlier than pivoting into private AI agent territory.

On the time of its December 2025 acquisition of Manus, Meta had already promised to combine Manus brokers into its personal social companies, together with Fb, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

However the explosive progress of OpenClaw, which began off as a private AI undertaking by Australian developer Peter Steinberger (now an OpenAI worker), might have spurred Manus to get the Telegram integration out the door extra shortly. (Apparently, Telegram will not be a Meta-owned messaging app.)

One other main distinction between Manus AI and OpenClaw is that Manus lives within the cloud, that means you’ll have to belief Manus and its guardian, Meta, together with your information. OpenClaw, then again, lives in your native {hardware}, which comes with its personal set of advantages (privateness and management) in addition to dangers (it may possibly do something in your system that you may).

Lastly, Manus AI is a paid product, with plans beginning at $40 a month for 8,000 Manus credit–which, as I found throughout a free trial, can run out shortly when working superior initiatives resembling app constructing. A $200/month Manus plan will get you 40,000 credit.

OpenClaw, then again, is free, though you’re by yourself in the case of supplying–and paying for–AI energy. You would doubtlessly use OpenClaw utterly free with a neighborhood LLM or a free OpenRouter mannequin, however the very best outcomes will come from utilizing a big cloud LLM like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini by way of an API.