Claude Duet vs Grok Bot vs Muse vs Dots: What You Pay

Four always-on AI agents are now on sale against each other, and the entry price runs from a free tier to $100 a month.

Anthropic's Claude Duet, xAI's Grok Bot, Meta's Muse and OpenAI's Dots all sell the same shape of product: an agent with its own cloud computer that runs on a schedule, connects to your accounts, and asks before it does anything irreversible. A Dev.to comparison published this week — which opens by noting that "over six weeks, every big AI lab has shipped the same idea" — prices all four and tests one of them, and the differences that survive are not about intelligence.

What each one costs

The author checked every price on official pages on 22 Oct 2026. Claude Duet carries "no extra cost on Claude Pro and Max during the research preview" — it draws on your plan's usage limits, and its background checks count against them. Grok Bot starts "from $30/mo (Premium, via X Subscription), with Super at $100 and Ultra at $200." Muse has a free tier with a weekly limit and a card required, then Power at $20/mo and Maximum at $100/mo. Dots needs ChatGPT Pro or the Business Premium/Enterprise beta: "Free, Go and Plus are excluded," and the cheapest Pro tier is $100.

Where you can actually use it

Availability splits the field harder than price. Duet is a "US-only research preview with a waitlist," and is not on Team or Enterprise plans. Grok Bot is generally available on paid plans, and the author uses it from India. Muse launched in the US plus Canada and Mexico. Dots "launched 29 Sep 2026 with a gradual rollout," with Pro excluded only in the EEA, Switzerland and the UK.

How much of the computer you get

This is the line that separates a scheduled assistant from a machine you can work on. Grok Bot gives you "a full persistent Linux box with a shell, a browser desktop you can watch or take over, and files that stay between sessions." Duet runs "a cloud VM with its own browser," but per the comparison "you can't yet watch or take over that browser, and it checks in every few hours." Muse runs logins inside what Meta calls the "Muse Secure VM," and Meta's claim — not the author's finding — is that Muse never sees your passwords. Dots runs its own cloud computer.

Connector catalogues run the other way: Duet is listed at "more than 6,000 connectors and plugins" against 4,000+ apps for Dots, while Grok Bot leans on MCP connectors plus whatever its browser can reach.

The one set of hands-on numbers

Only Grok Bot was tested; Duet, Muse and Dots are documentation-based in this comparison, which is worth holding onto when reading any head-to-head. On the tested box, a pip install --user cowsay finished in 0.8 s and the install persisted into a later session. Four connector reads across Gmail, Notion, GitHub and X came back correct, "each in under 5 s." A scheduled one-shot routine set for 10:05 AM IST "fired at 10:07:58 IST, 178 s late." A 12-minute background job completed unattended, but the box idled about 8 minutes mid-run and wall-clock time stretched to roughly 19 minutes.

Approvals, and one correction worth copying

All four gate consequential actions. The comparison flags a claim circulating in launch coverage — that Duet "can't move money" — as only half right: it can't move money between accounts, but it can make a payment you approve, with Anthropic's own example being a $640 permit fee. The "never sees your passwords" line belongs to Meta's description of Muse, not to Duet.

What to watch

The buying question for the next quarter is not which agent reasons better. It is whether Duet leaves US-only preview and whether anyone besides xAI lets you take over the agent's browser. If you already pay for Claude Pro or Max and live in the US, Duet costs nothing extra to try. If you need an agent outside the US today and want shell access, $30/mo is currently the floor.