The so-called “next big thing” in AI chatbots has officially launched to the public, offering a sign-up bonus when you do. Manus, the AI chatbot some consider better than ChatGPT and DeepSeek, is now open for business.
Sign Up For China’s Latest Big AI Chatbot and Get a Handy Bonus
Manus is one of the latest and greatest additions to the AI chatbot world, launching in March 2025. Unlike other AI chatbots, Manus has a much stronger focus on deep thinking and answers most prompts with in-depth responses. It’s similar to ChatGPT’s Deep Research mode, with Manus compiling an extensive report for each query, showing its working processes and a timer.
And now, Manus sign-ups are officially open to the public. Come one, come all. Any new Manus subscribers receive a handy 1,000 credits to spend on whatever queries they desire. Of course, the number of credits used per report varies. Indeed, prompting Manus to build a report on “What is MakeUseOf.com” took a good eight minutes—but it was comprehensive, identifying myself and Editor in Chief Ben Stegner as long-term contributors and detailing information on our yearly page views. This report consumed around 50 credits, leaving me with 950 or so for my next outing.
I then opted for a deep stock evaluation for a company called Quadrise, which manufactures synthetic biofuels designed to drastically reduce the amount of pollution from giant cargo ships (and the marine industry). I was genuinely a little concerned about how long this report took; I was still waiting for the analysis to complete after 20 minutes. However, it was worth waiting. Manus’s report on Quadrise stock was about as in-depth as I could have hoped for, with insights into stock price, company outlook, its products, overall potential, and more, all with a technical analysis.
This second report used around 250 credits, depleting my count to around 700. The reality is that your 1,000 free Manus credits aren’t going to last for a huge amount of time. This is especially true if you opt for intensive research topics or prompts that may require multiple rounds of edits, like coding tasks or similar.
What’s interesting about Manus is that it’s also touted as “the general AI agent.” Now, AI agents are autonomous AI tools that can take actions for you online, automate processes for you, troubleshoot errors, and much more. In that, I tasked Manus with buying a train ticket for me, traveling from Penzance to St. Ives in Cornwall, traveling and returning on the same day. It worked through the process in handy steps, providing a list of travel times and offering me a selection of prices.
It’s useful, there is no doubting that. But in this specific task, I would have had the job done within minutes on my own. This is a specific example, but there are other similar tasks to which this time delay extends.
I must admit I’m a little late to the Manus crowd. But having signed up and given it a go, I can say it’s a very handy AI tool to have in the catalog. But if the 1,000 credits aren’t enough for you, there are two packages you can upgrade to:
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Upgrade to Manus Starter beta for $39 per month
- Grants 3,900 credits per month
- Run up to two tasks simultaneously
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Update to Manus Pro beta for $199 per month
- Grants 19,900 per month
- Run up to five tasks at the same time
- High Effort mode and other beta features
Both upgrade options receive priority access during peak hours and extended context length, which is handy for those deep research topics where you need lots of inputs and edits.
