OpenManus: review, pricing, security and alternatives

What OpenManus does

OpenManus belongs to the automation family: platforms, often visual, that chain steps, apps and models into workflows with or without an agent. On our grid it ranks #14 of the 26 projects of this family listed in the directory.

You use it from: terminal (CLI). Usable models: GPT (OpenAI), Claude (Anthropic), and any OpenAI-compatible model. It can run on your own machine or server.

Who is OpenManus for?

It is for teams that want to connect their tools (CRM, e-mail, spreadsheets) and hand the AI the steps that require reading or deciding. Typical tasks people give it:

• qualify incoming requests and route them
• extract data from documents into a spreadsheet
• generate periodic reports

It is a good candidate if you are comfortable in a terminal and your data must stay on your machines.

Access and human control

According to its documentation, OpenManus can:

• run commands in a terminal
• read and edit files
• drive a web browser
• call online services and APIs

We could not establish whether it asks for human approval before sensitive actions: test it first on an unimportant account or folder.

OpenManus pricing

The code is free, under the MIT licence.

Getting started with OpenManus

1. Install it: the project ships as a Python package (install with pip or uv). The exact command is in the repository README.
2. Create an API key with the model provider and put it in an environment variable, never in a shared or versioned file.
3. Give it a first playground with nothing at stake: a test folder, a secondary account or a throwaway project. Only open your real accounts once you have seen how it behaves.
4. Give it a short, checkable task, review the result and its action log, then raise the difficulty step by step.

Security: risk level

A workflow runs unattended: limit the credentials it holds and log what it sends.

Points found for OpenManus:

• Sensitive access: it can run commands in a terminal, with no established default human approval.
• Outside content: it reads web pages or API responses, which may contain booby-trapped instructions (prompt injection).

Three habits: least privilege (minimal rights, dedicated keys), human approval for irreversible actions, a sandbox for code execution. The AI agent security check reviews your setup in a few minutes.

Project activity and releases

Created on March 6, 2025, the FoundationAgents/OpenManus repository has 58,764 stars, 10,186 forks and 233 open issues, with 535 commits in total. Last change 2 months ago.

Over the last 52 weeks: 10 commits, an average of 0.2 per week.

3 releases in total; 0 in the last twelve months. Latest release: v0.3.0, on April 10, 2025.

OpenManus vs other automation

GitHub stars of the best-rated open-source projects in the automation family. Stars measure attention, not quality: a heavily promoted project collects them fast, a specialised tool will have few.

OpenManus and other automation at a glance

The 7 best-ranked agents in the same family, 7 of them open source. The score out of 100 only applies to open-source projects; for proprietary services we show the published entry price. A dash marks information the documentation does not state.

How we rated it

Score: 66/100, computed only from public, verifiable data, with no subjective testing or partnership:

• Adoption 33/40: 58,764 stars on a log scale (40 points from about 200,000).
• Activity 13/30: last commit 2 months ago, 0 releases in six months, 10 commits in a year.
• Framework 20/30: licence, default human approval, self-hosting, model choice and documentation site.

The score does not say whether the agent will succeed at your tasks: it measures how solid the project is. The full grid is on the method page.