The best AI agents for business: 11 compared, and how to run them as one team

November 10, 2026· 43 min read

The best AI agents for business: Vestra blog banner

The best AI agents for business split into three kinds: personal agents built for one person, team assistants that serve a group as one helper, and AI offices that run many agents as one team. Most of the best-known agents, including Claude Code, OpenAI's dot, Grok Bot, Meta Muse, Hermes Agent and Perplexity Teammates, are personal: one person, one account, usually one company's AI. Vestra is an AI office: the one place where agents on different engines, including Claude Code and Codex, work together as teammates for the whole business.

Quick answer

Best for running all your agents as one team: Vestra, from $19 a month
Best personal agent for ChatGPT users: OpenAI Dot, from $100 a month
Best personal agent for developers: Claude Code, on paid Claude plans
Best personal agent for research and engineering: Perplexity Teammates, on Perplexity Max at $200 a month
Best personal agent on X or in Cursor: Grok Bot, with X Premium from $30 a month
Best for personal errands: Meta Muse, free with limits
Best self-hosted personal agent: Hermes Agent, free and open source
Best for big one-off tasks: Manus, with a free plan and paid credits
Best single helper inside Slack or Teams: Viktor, from $100 a month for the workspace
Best for inbox, meetings and calendar: Lindy, from $29.99 per user a month
Best for trigger-based automations: Tasklet, from $25 a month

A note before we start: Vestra is our product, so we've put it first. Everything below was checked against each company's own pages, docs and help articles on 10 November 2026. We compared documented features, not hands-on speed or quality, and where something works against us we've said so.

Contents

The 11 AI agents at a glance
What's the difference between a personal AI agent and an AI team?
How did we evaluate these AI agents?
The office that runs your agents as a team: Vestra
Personal agents: built for one person
Team assistants: one helper for many people
Which features matter most in an AI agent for business?
How do these AI agents compare on the features that matter?
What does it look like when agents on different engines work as one team?
Where does each AI agent run, and who controls the data?
When is a personal AI agent enough?
What happens when a business stacks personal agents?
Which AI agent is best for each team and role?
What should you ask a vendor before buying an AI agent?
How do you roll out AI agents across a business?
Glossary
FAQ

The 11 AI agents at a glance

Vestra. Type: AI office. Built for: a whole business, people and agents together. Engines: Vestra's own, Claude Code or Codex per teammate, with Gemini, Grok and Muse in the picker. Starts at: $19 a month.
OpenAI Dot. Type: personal agent. Built for: one ChatGPT account. Engines: OpenAI's own models. Starts at: $100 a month with ChatGPT Pro.
Claude Code. Type: personal coding agent. Built for: one developer in a codebase. Engines: Anthropic's Claude models. Starts at: paid Claude plans; Team seats $20 a month billed yearly.
Perplexity Teammates. Type: personal agents. Built for: one individual Perplexity Max subscriber. Engines: models you choose, Claude Opus 5.5 by default. Starts at: $200 a month.
Grok Bot. Type: personal agents. Built for: one xAI account. Engines: managed by xAI, no model picker. Starts at: $30 a month with X Premium.
Meta Muse. Type: personal agent. Built for: one person's life, in the US and Canada. Engines: Meta's Muse Spark. Starts at: free with limits.
Hermes Agent. Type: self-hosted personal agent. Built for: one person who hosts their own agent. Engines: any provider you connect. Starts at: free, open source.
Manus. Type: general-purpose agent. Built for: one person handing over big tasks. Engines: Manus's own harness. Starts at: free plan, paid credits.
Viktor. Type: team assistant. Built for: one shared AI employee in Slack or Teams. Starts at: $100 a month per workspace.
Lindy. Type: team assistant. Built for: inbox, meetings and follow-ups, billed per active user. Starts at: $29.99 per user a month.
Tasklet. Type: automation agents. Built for: trigger-based workflows. Starts at: $25 a month.

What's the difference between a personal AI agent and an AI team?

A personal AI agent works for one person, in one app, usually on one company's AI. An AI team, or AI office, works for the whole business: a chief runs the agents, each agent can run on a different engine, they share one memory and one set of rules, and you can see all of them working in one place. Deciding which you need matters more than any feature comparison.

What personal agents are good at

Personal agents are excellent at helping one person go faster. Claude Code makes a developer far more productive in a codebase. OpenAI's dot keeps working on one person's projects between conversations. Meta Muse runs errands across one person's email, calendar and accounts. For an individual, that's often all they need.

Where personal agents break down in a business

Problems start when a business adds personal agents one person at a time. Vestra's handbook describes what happens: agents got good at doing work, but most of them still work alone. Each one knows only what its own person told it and can't see what a colleague's agents are doing. So people become the glue between agents. They:

Brief every agent by hand, pasting the same context again and again.
Carry work from one agent to another, because agents can't hand off to each other.
Chase every result, first to ask whether it's done and then whether it's right.
Click through forms, settings and dashboards in every tool.

What an AI team changes

An AI team replaces that glue work. You brief once and the context travels with the work. Chiefs hand work between people's agents directly. Work counts as done only when it has been checked. You say what you need in a sentence, and the screens are there to see the work. And because the engine sits underneath each teammate, the agents your people already trust, like Claude Code and Codex, can become teammates rather than separate tools.

Side by side

Who it's for: a personal agent serves one person; an AI team serves the whole business.
Who manages it: with personal agents you manage each one; in a team, a chief runs them and brings you only real decisions.
Which AI does the work: a personal agent runs on its maker's AI; a team lets you pick the engine for each teammate and mix them.
Memory: a personal agent remembers one person's chats; a team shares one sourced memory that every agent reads before it acts.
Hand-offs: personal agents need a person to carry work; in a team, chiefs hand work to each other with the context attached.
Rules: personal agents each have their own limits; a team has one set of caps, approvals and receipts.
Visibility: personal agents live in separate apps; a team shows every agent's desk and current work on one floor.

How did we evaluate these AI agents?

We kept tools that do real work on their own, can own ongoing work, have controls and publish how you get them. Then we compared them on eight questions a business should ask.

Who is it built for? One person, a team sharing one helper, or a whole business of people and agents.
Does it do the work? Can it use apps, browse the web, write code, send email or make calls, rather than only answer?
Can it own ongoing work? Schedules, event triggers and goals held over weeks, not just one prompt at a time.
Which AI does the work? One maker's models, a model picker, or a choice of engines per agent.
Can its agents work together? Can work move between agents, and between different people's agents, without a person carrying it?
Is the memory shared and checkable? Can you see what it remembers, where each fact came from and fix it?
Are the controls real? Actions that always need a yes, hard spending caps, sealed logins and receipts.
What does a team actually pay? Per person, per seat, per workspace or per office, and whether unused credits roll over.

We compared documented features and published prices from each company's own pages. We did not run speed, quality or reliability tests, and we don't claim any agent is more reliable than another.

The office that runs your agents as a team

1. Vestra: best for running all your agents as one team

What it is: Vestra is one office for your people and your AI agents. Each person has a chief, an agent they name that runs their other agents. Teammates are agents hired for whole jobs, and each one runs on the engine you pick for it. Everyone works from one shared memory, under one set of rules, on an office floor you can see.

What makes it different: every other tool on this list gives you an agent. Vestra gives you a team. You can bring the agents your people already trust, like Claude Code and Codex, as engines for teammates, and they work alongside teammates on other engines under one chief, one memory and one rulebook.

How it works

You tell your chief what you need in a sentence, such as "I need someone to get us paid on time." It asks what a good manager would ask, then writes a teammate card: the job in one line, goals you can check, the apps it will use, its first routines and what it must ask you about first. You change anything you like and say yes. The teammate takes a desk and starts on its goals.

Each teammate does three kinds of work: one-off asks, routines on a schedule or when something happens, and a goal it holds for months. You shape seven parts of it: personality, goals, skills, apps, routines, memory and engine. Ready-made skills cover Sales, Bookkeeping, Content, Customer care and Research, and custom skills capture how your business works.

Bring your own agents

Every teammate has two layers: everything that makes it yours on top, and a swappable engine underneath. The engine can be Vestra's own, which works with the top models, or Claude Code or Codex; the engine picker also lists Gemini, Grok and Muse. In the handbook's example, one teammate builds the app on Claude Code while another reviews the work on Codex, so a different engine reads the code with fresh eyes. Switching engines keeps the teammate's job, memory and kit, and every engine works under the same approvals, limits and receipts. Bring your own agents

The rest of the office

The chief: runs your agents, speaks for you to colleagues' chiefs and answers only to you, with a morning brief and one-tap decisions. Your chief
Every agent's kit: a cloud computer with a browser, files and a terminal you can watch and take over; a phone; an inbox; a vault with a card and sealed logins; and 2,000+ apps that connect in a click. Kit
The shared brain: a wiki of your people, customers, decisions and numbers, with a source for every line. Correct one teammate once and every teammate learns. Export it as Markdown any time. Brain
The office: every person, chief and teammate at a desk, each teammate tagged with its engine's logo, and a Right now feed that says what each one is doing, live. The office
Working together: chiefs ask, answer and hand off for their people; spaces hold shared goals; shared apps are built in a sentence for people and agents to use together. Spaces
Trust and control: spending over your limit, deleting something and contacting someone new always wait for a person. Cap any task and the day, up to $100 a day, with a cost check before unusually big tasks and a receipt for every job. Trust

Pricing

Lite: $19 a month ($17 yearly), up to 3 teammates, 2,000 credits.
Pro: $97 a month ($87 yearly), up to 20 teammates, 10,000 credits, phone calls.
Max: $197 a month ($177 yearly), up to 50 teammates, 20,000 credits.
Ultra: $497 a month ($447 yearly), up to 150 teammates, 50,000 credits.
Enterprise: from $4,000 a month, in Vestra's cloud, your cloud or on your premises.

Every plan includes your chief and the whole office. One credit is one cent, the same for model time, actions, the computer, searches and calls. Unused credits roll over, and every new office starts with 1,000 free credits. Plans

What's live today, and what's coming

Vestra publishes a Where We Stand board. Live today: a chief and a team of teammates with routines and a morning brief; a cloud computer; calls and email from your chief, with phone calls from Pro; connected business tools; the memory wiki; any engine per teammate (Vestra's own, Claude Code or Codex); limits, approvals and receipts; and your chief in the app, Slack, Telegram and email. Building now: a chief for every person, chiefs working together, the walkable office, meetings, spaces, access control and WhatsApp and iMessage. Then: a phone and inbox for every agent, the vault, shared apps, one shared brain for the whole team and the front door for clients. Where We Stand

Strengths

The only tool here built to run agents on different engines as one team.
Your engineers keep Claude Code and Codex, and those agents gain a job, a memory and the office rules.
One memory with sources you can open and edit, and one correction that teaches every teammate.
Hard lines on spending, deleting and first contact that no setting turns off, plus daily caps and receipts.
Priced per office, from $19 a month, with rollover credits.

Watch out for

Phone calls start on Pro, not Lite.
Several team features, including the walkable office, chiefs working together and spaces, are on the Building now list.
Today you reach your chief in the app on the web and Mac, in Slack, in Telegram or by email; WhatsApp and iMessage are being built.

Best for: businesses that want several jobs handed over at once, with every agent, whatever it runs on, working as one team.

Personal agents: built for one person

The seven agents in this section are strong products. Each one is built around one person and one account, and in most cases one company's AI. If one person in your business needs help, any of them may be the right answer. If your business needs its agents to work together, read each "In a team" note.

2. OpenAI Dot: best personal agent for ChatGPT users

What it is: OpenAI's dots are agents inside ChatGPT that take on ongoing work. You start with one primary dot, which works in the background and brings results back for your review. Specialist dots, which take on dedicated responsibilities inside a company, are starting with focused enterprise pilots. OpenAI: introducing dots

How it works

Your dot's profile lists its work under In progress, Scheduled and Completed. It has its own cloud computer that you can open, take over and hand back, and access to your own computer is optional through the ChatGPT desktop app. It researches in the background, suggests ways to help, reviews what's in your connected apps without being asked, and runs reminders and recurring tasks you schedule. It starts with context from ChatGPT memory and forms its own memories, including from connected apps.

You reach it in ChatGPT on the web, the mobile apps and the desktop app, plus Microsoft Teams and Slack; texting over iMessage or RCS is a limited beta for Pro users in the US, Canada and Mexico. It connects to 4,000+ apps through plugins, with permissions shared with ChatGPT, ChatGPT Work and Codex. It runs on OpenAI's own models and can use different ones for different parts of its work.

Controls

Custom rules cover what a dot may share, buy or access: act without asking, act if you asked for it, ask first, or hand it to you. Auto-review checks some actions, like sending an email, before they run. OpenAI's getting-started guide doesn't describe per-task or daily spending caps.

Pricing

Dots come with ChatGPT Pro at $100, $200 or $500 a month, or a Business Premium seat at $125 a month ($100 billed yearly); a Business workspace needs at least two seats. Enterprise workspaces pay flat rates or by usage, and work a dot hands to ChatGPT Work or Codex is billed separately. ChatGPT Pro plans

Strengths

Deep inside ChatGPT, with a huge plugin library.
Proactive: it reviews connected apps and suggests work without being asked.
Its own cloud computer, with take-over and hand-back.

Watch out for

You start with one dot, not a team; specialist dots are in enterprise pilots.
A dot can't have its own email address at launch, and it can't call you at launch.
You can't view or delete a dot's own memories one by one: deleting them means deleting the dot.
Access is rolling out gradually and excludes the EEA, Switzerland and the UK for Pro users.

In a team: a dot works for one person's ChatGPT account and runs on OpenAI's models. It can't become a teammate alongside agents on other engines. Vestra vs OpenAI Dot

Best for: people already deep in ChatGPT who want it to keep working between conversations.

3. Claude Code: best personal agent for developers

What it is: Claude Code is Anthropic's coding agent. It understands your codebase, edits files, runs commands and helps you ship code, from a bug fix to a multi-day migration. Claude Code

How it works

It maps and explains large codebases with agentic search, without you picking context files by hand. It works with GitHub and GitLab to read issues, write code, run tests and open pull requests. It follows imports across a repository, keeps going after failing tests, plans, asks clarifying questions and can handle work that spans hours or days. It can run several tasks at once and flags the decisions it needs from you.

It runs in the terminal on macOS, Linux and Windows, in the desktop app, on the web, in the iOS and Android apps, in GitHub Actions, in VS Code and JetBrains IDEs, and in Slack. In the terminal it runs locally and talks directly to model APIs. It can use MCP servers to reach more tools, and the desktop app groups related sessions into Projects so one person can supervise several agents.

Controls

Claude Code asks for permission before changing files or running commands. Enterprise adds role-based access, spend limits, usage analytics and custom data controls.

Pricing

Access is included with Claude Pro, Max and Ultra, with Team and Enterprise plans, or with a Claude Console account billed at API rates. Team is $20 per seat per month billed yearly, for 2 to 150 seats, with up to $500 a month in pooled API credits. Enterprise pricing isn't listed.

Strengths

One of the most capable coding agents available, across every surface a developer uses.
Long-running, parallel work with tests and pull requests.
Extensible through MCP, with Slack and GitHub integration.

Watch out for

It's a coding agent; the rest of the business needs other tools.
The core experience is one developer working in one repository.
Its knowledge of your business lives in that developer's sessions and project files, not in a company-wide memory other teams' agents read.

In a team: this is where an office helps most. In Vestra, a teammate can run on Claude Code as its engine. It keeps doing what Claude Code does well, and gains a desk, a job with goals, the shared brain and the office rules. Another teammate can review its work on Codex, and your chief keeps everyone posted.

Best for: developers who want an agent in their codebase today.

4. Perplexity Teammates: best personal agent for research and engineering

What it is: Perplexity Teammates are agents that own ongoing work inside Perplexity Computer. You give one a responsibility, such as triaging bug reports or researching a market, and it plans the tasks and follows through until the result is ready for review. Perplexity: Teammates

How it works

You create each teammate yourself and give it a role. A teammate breaks a goal into tasks and starts more agents to run them in parallel, and teammates in the same Project share context and can message each other. Each one sits in your sidebar with one persistent thread showing what it's doing. Each runs on its own isolated computer with a desktop and browser that you can take over.

Teammates use your installed plugins, such as Slack, GitHub, Gmail and Linear, and can use websites without connectors. They watch connected tools, start work when something arrives, schedule follow-ups and run recurring automations. They remember project goals, task history and shared files across runs. You choose the model for each teammate, with Claude Opus 5.5 as the default. They work on the Perplexity website and iOS app, and can be tagged in Slack, GitHub and Linear.

Controls

Teammates send approval requests and progress updates, and each gets rules on when to involve you. Usage shows on the Usage page. Perplexity hasn't published per-task or daily spending caps for teammates.

Pricing

Teammates need an individual Perplexity Max subscription: $200 a month or $2,000 a year. Usage is free for a promotional period, then draws on credits included in Max; Perplexity hasn't published how many credits or how many teammates Max includes. Perplexity Max

Strengths

Strong research, backed by Perplexity's search.
A model choice per teammate.
Good for engineering work across GitHub, Linear and Datadog.

Watch out for

A research preview for individual Max subscribers, and behaviour may change.
You set teammates up one by one, and each person needs their own $200 Max plan.
No published phone calls, own email address or hard spending caps.

In a team: teammates share context within one person's Project, but each person's Perplexity account is its own world. Vestra vs Perplexity Teammates

Best for: researchers and engineers already paying for Perplexity Max.

5. Grok Bot: best personal agent on X or in Cursor

What it is: Grok Bot gives you Bots you create in xAI's app. Your primary Bot is your main point of contact and coordinates the others. Grok Bot docs

How it works

You create each Bot yourself with a name, a shape and a colour, then give it its job, sources and approval limits in your first message and ask it to remember them. There's no settings page for a personal Bot. Your Bots share one persistent cloud computer with a browser, command line and files. Routines run on a schedule or when something new happens in a connected app, in the cloud while your laptop is closed. Show a Bot a task once and it saves the steps as a skill.

You reach your Bots on desktop apps for macOS, Windows and Linux, iPhone and Android, Slack, or by tagging @bot on X, by chat, voice call or voice note. You can claim one email address at mail.grokbot.com, which your Bots use to read, search and send email. Apps connect account-wide, so every Bot can use every connected app, and logins saved in Vault fill in without being shown to the model. xAI manages model selection, so there's no model picker.

Controls

Auto Review is on by default, so most actions run after a model-based check. Ask-first rules always stop matching actions, and team rules can only make things stricter. You can set a monthly limit on extra usage, but it isn't a hard stop in the middle of a run.

Pricing

Grok Bot comes with an X Subscription: Premium at $30 a month, Super at $100 or Ultra at $200, for individuals or as team seats. It's also included with paid Cursor plans and some SuperGrok and X plans. Bot usage comes from a weekly pool shared with Cursor and the Grok apps. X Subscription pricing

Strengths

Low entry price if you already pay for X or Cursor.
Many surfaces, including voice and X itself.
Skills learned from one demonstration.

Watch out for

Each Bot's job and limits live in your chat with it, not on a settings page.
Each Bot has its own memory, with only a few facts shared, and no memory screen.
One shared computer and one email address across all your Bots.

In a team: your Bots coordinate within your xAI account, on xAI's models. In Vestra, Grok appears in the engine picker for teammates. Vestra vs Grok Bot

Best for: people who already pay for X or Cursor and want agents at no extra cost.

6. Meta Muse: best for personal errands

What it is: Meta Muse is a personal AI agent that Meta describes as built for everyone and around your whole life. Muse for Small Business adds skills and connectors for small business owners. Meta: introducing Muse

How it works

Muse can work on several tasks at once, on a schedule and in response to events, and it sends you messages and ideas without being asked. It has its own secure cloud computer with a browser you share with it, keeps working after you close the app, and reads, creates and edits documents, images, code and web apps. It connects your email, calendar, Instagram and more, and keeps logins in a credential store the agent can't read.

You can edit and delete what it remembers in a Memory.md file and import memories from another assistant. It runs on Muse Spark, Meta's own model. You use it in the Muse app on iOS and Android, WhatsApp, Mac and the web, by message or voice.

Controls

You approve actions like sending emails and making purchases before they happen: allow once, always allow or deny. An audit trail shows what Muse has done and plans to do. When it shops, it makes a one-time card number at checkout so your real card isn't seen.

Pricing

Free with a usage limit that refreshes. Power is $20 a month for 500M Muse tokens a week; Maximum is $100 a month for 3B. Muse plans

Strengths

Free to start, with a generous paid tier.
Editable memory and a clear audit trail.
Private shopping with one-time card numbers.

Watch out for

It's one personal agent built around one person's life, not a team.
Available only in the US and Canada, for people 18 and over.
Runs only on Meta's own model.

In a team: Muse is one agent for one person. In Vestra, Muse is listed in the engine picker, so a teammate could run on it inside a team. Vestra vs Meta Muse

Best for: individuals in the US or Canada who want help with life admin.

7. Hermes Agent: best self-hosted personal agent

What it is: Hermes Agent from Nous Research is an open-source, self-improving agent. It keeps an agent-curated memory, creates skills from experience, improves them as it uses them and builds a deepening model of who you are across sessions. Hermes Agent docs

How it works

You run it yourself: on a low-cost VPS, a GPU cluster, or serverless infrastructure that hibernates when idle, with local, Docker, SSH and cloud sandbox backends. It installs on Linux, macOS, Windows, NixOS and Android via Termux. One gateway connects it to more than 20 platforms, including Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, email, SMS, Microsoft Teams and Google Chat. It works with Nous Portal, OpenRouter, OpenAI or any compatible endpoint.

It has 60+ built-in tools, MCP support, subagents for parallel work, voice mode and built-in cron with delivery to any connected platform. Bot Mode lets you run named specialist Bots, each with its own model, memory, skills and routines, that collaborate in group chats.

Controls

The docs cover command approval, authorisation and container isolation. Because you host it, the security of the server is yours to manage.

Pricing

The agent is free under the MIT licence. You pay for hosting and for the models and tools you connect, for example through a Nous Portal subscription.

Strengths

Open source, with full control over hosting and models.
Very wide messaging coverage from one gateway.
Memory and skills that improve the longer it runs.

Watch out for

You host, update and secure it yourself.
Its memory centres on a model of one person.
No built-in business controls like per-task caps, sealed company cards or an office-wide record.

In a team: Bot Mode can give one owner a set of specialist Bots, but it's a do-it-yourself system around one person's setup, not a managed office for a business's people and agents.

Best for: technical individuals who want to run and tune their own agent.

8. Manus: best for big one-off tasks

What it is: Manus is a general-purpose agent that takes a goal, such as a research report, a slide deck, a website or a video, and works through it on its own cloud computer. Meta bought Manus in December 2025 and continues to sell it as a separate service. Meta acquires Manus

How it works

Manus 2.0, released in September 2026, introduced a new agent harness that loads specialised capabilities only when a task needs them. It added Automations, which start workflows from events in connected services; Manus Studio, a desktop workspace for documents, spreadsheets, slides, websites, code, games and video; remote control from your phone; and a purchasable Cloud Computer for always-on work. Manus also launched Cue, a separate app in early access for personal agents that each have an email, phone number, wallet and computer. Introducing Manus 2.0

Pricing

A free plan, paid individual plans and a Team plan with a shared credit pool. Plan credits reset monthly; add-on credits never expire. Exact prices are on Manus's pricing page. Manus plans

Strengths

Very broad output: research, slides, sites, code, games and video.
Event-based automations and a dedicated cloud computer.

Watch out for

Credit use depends on how complex each task is, so monthly cost is hard to predict.
Plan credits don't roll over.
Built around one person handing over goals; Cue's personal agents are in early access.

In a team: Manus's team plan pools credits, but it isn't built to run your other agents, like Claude Code or Codex, as teammates.

Best for: big one-off deliverables you want done end to end.

Team assistants: one helper for many people

These three tools serve a team rather than one person. They do it as a single shared assistant or a set of automations, not as a team of agents on different engines run by chiefs.

9. Viktor: best single helper inside Slack or Teams

What it is: Viktor is an AI employee that lives in Slack, Microsoft Teams and email. Anyone on the team can tag it, and it reads the request, uses connected tools, produces the deliverable and reports back in the thread. Viktor

How it works

Viktor works across 9,800+ integrations, uses a real browser and runs code, so it can hand back reports, dashboards, documents and small apps. Its context belongs to the workspace, so what one person teaches it can help the team. Viktor also offers desktop apps for Mac, Windows and Linux, an Android app and a web app.

Pricing

Free to start with up to $100 in credits, no credit card. The Team plan is $100 a month for 40,000 credits shared across the whole workspace, not per seat; unused credits roll over, and you can set auto top-ups with a monthly cap. Enterprise adds per-user spend caps, invoicing and security review support. Viktor pricing

Strengths

Lives where many teams already talk: Slack and Microsoft Teams.
Workspace pricing that doesn't grow per person.
Wide integrations, browser access and code execution. Viktor lists SOC 2 compliance.

Watch out for

It's one shared AI employee, not a team of agents with their own jobs and engines.
It works mainly inside chat threads, without an office view of many agents at work.
There's no way to run your developers' Claude Code or Codex agents as teammates inside it.

Best for: teams that run their work in Slack or Teams and want one helper everyone can use.

10. Lindy: best for inbox, meetings and calendar

What it is: Lindy is a Slack-native AI teammate that also works over iMessage and a Chrome extension. It manages inboxes, drafts replies in your voice, records meetings and follows up, schedules meetings and sends daily briefs. Lindy pricing

How it works

Lindy comes with 40+ skills, lets you create your own and connects to 1,500+ integrations, plus any MCP server. It keeps persistent workspace context, team files with version history and a shared meeting library, and runs scheduled routines. Computer use is available on higher plans, and you can pick the model for each task.

Controls

Anything with outside impact, like sending an email, updating a ticket or publishing a document, waits for approval; read-only lookups don't. If the credit pool runs low, Lindy pauses and tells you. Lindy lists SOC 2 and GDPR compliance, with HIPAA and a signed BAA on Enterprise.

Pricing

$50 in free credits for 7 days, no credit card. Then $29.99 a month for each active user, with 3,000 credits each in a shared pool. Top-ups are $10 per 1,000 credits; monthly credits don't roll over, top-up credits do.

Strengths

Polished at inbox, calendar and meeting work.
Clear approval rule for anything with outside impact.
Model choice per task.

Watch out for

Every person who uses Lindy, including by mentioning it in Slack, is a billed seat, so cost grows with headcount.
Monthly credits don't roll over.
It's one assistant shared by a team, not a team of agents on different engines.

Best for: busy people and small teams who want help with email, meetings and follow-ups.

11. Tasklet: best for trigger-based automations

What it is: Tasklet lets you describe a job in plain English, then runs it as an agent that connects to your tools and fires on triggers, such as a new email or a webhook. Its own tagline is "run your business on agents." How Tasklet credits work

How it works

Each thread can be set to an intelligence level, from Basic to Genius, each using a different model, with higher levels costing more per action. Agents can use connections, a browser, knowledge and instant apps that they build. Teams can share agents, connections and drives.

Controls

You can set a per-thread daily credit limit, 10,000 credits a day by default, and Tasklet emails at 80%, 95% and 100% of your allowance. Tasklet lists SOC 2 Type II.

Pricing

Free to start. Monthly plans from $25, adjustable in $5 steps, at 400 credits per dollar; monthly credits don't roll over. One-time credits cost 320 per dollar and last a year. Paid plans get 600 bonus credits on days you log in.

Strengths

Low entry price and a real free tier.
Fine-grained cost control per thread.
Good fit for "when this happens, handle it" workflows.

Watch out for

Every automation run costs credits, so frequent triggers add up fast.
Monthly credits don't roll over.
Agents are organised as threads and automations, not as a team with a manager and a shared memory.

Best for: operators who think in triggers and workflows.

Which features matter most in an AI agent for business?

Nine features separate an agent that helps one person from one a business can rely on. Here is what each means and why it matters.

Its own computer

An agent with its own cloud computer, with a browser, files and a terminal, can use websites that have no connector, like supplier portals, booking pages and government forms. Look for the ability to watch it live and take over with one click.

Its own email address and phone number

An agent that writes from its own address and calls from its own number keeps your personal inbox out of it and makes clear who did what. Without them, it either can't reach people or has to act as you.

A choice of engine

Different work suits different AI. An agent locked to one maker's models can't take advantage of a better engine for coding, reviewing or writing. The strongest setups let you pick per agent and switch without losing the agent's job or memory.

Ongoing work, not just prompts

Routines on a schedule, triggers when something happens in a connected tool, and goals held for months are what turn an agent into something that owns a job.

A memory you can see and fix

An agent's memory should be readable, sourced and editable. If you can't see why an agent believes something, you can't correct it, and a wrong fact keeps causing wrong work.

Approvals that can't be switched off

Some actions should always wait for a person: spending over a limit, deleting something and contacting someone new. Prompts can be talked around; product rules can't.

Hard spending caps

A monthly limit that isn't a hard stop mid-run is a warning, not a cap. Look for per-task and per-day caps that stop work at a sensible point, and a cost check before unusually big jobs.

Sealed logins and receipts

Agents should use logins without seeing passwords, and every piece of work should come with a receipt showing what it cost and who did it.

Working with other agents

The feature most personal agents lack: can this agent hand work to another person's agent, read from a shared team memory and work under shared rules? That's the difference between a set of helpers and a team.

How do these AI agents compare on the features that matter?

Here is how the tools line up on five features businesses ask about most, based on each company's published documentation.

Its own email address

Vestra: your chief has its own email address today; an inbox for every agent is on the roadmap.
OpenAI Dot: works in your connected email, but can't have its own address at launch.
Grok Bot: you can claim one address that all your Bots share.
Meta Muse: works in your connected email; Meta doesn't describe an address of its own.
Perplexity Teammates: work in Gmail through plugins; Perplexity hasn't published an own address.
Viktor: reachable by email as well as Slack and Teams.
Manus: agents in Cue, its early-access personal agents app, each get their own email.

Phone calls

Vestra: calls from your chief's own number, from the Pro plan.
OpenAI Dot: you can call your dot from the ChatGPT app, but it can't call you at launch.
Grok Bot: voice calls with you; xAI doesn't describe Bots calling other people.
Meta Muse and Perplexity Teammates: phone calls aren't described.
Manus: Cue agents get a phone number, in early access.

Choice of engine or model

Vestra: pick the engine per teammate: Vestra's own, Claude Code or Codex, with Gemini, Grok and Muse in the picker.
Perplexity Teammates: pick the model per teammate.
Lindy: pick the model per task.
Tasklet: pick an intelligence level per thread, each mapped to a model.
Hermes Agent: any provider you connect.
OpenAI Dot, Claude Code, Meta Muse: their makers' own models.
Grok Bot: xAI manages model selection; no picker.

Hard spending caps

Vestra: per-task and per-day caps, up to $100 a day, plus a cost check before unusually big tasks.
Tasklet: a per-thread daily credit limit.
Viktor: auto top-ups with a monthly spend cap; per-user caps on Enterprise.
Lindy: pauses when the shared pool runs low; admins set allocations per seat.
Grok Bot: a monthly limit on extra usage that isn't a hard stop mid-run.
OpenAI Dot, Perplexity Teammates, Meta Muse: per-task or daily caps aren't described.

A memory you can see and edit

Vestra: a shared wiki with a numbered source for every line, editable by you, exportable as Markdown.
Meta Muse: a Memory.md file you can edit, with import from another assistant.
Perplexity Teammates: remember project goals and files; Perplexity's Brain, in research preview, links memory entries to sources.
OpenAI Dot: you can't view or delete its memories one by one.
Grok Bot: no memory screen; you ask a Bot what it remembers.

What does it look like when agents on different engines work as one team?

Personal agents can't do this, so it helps to see it once. This example comes from Vestra's handbook, where Northstar, a small company that makes appointment-reminder software for dental clinics, runs its office.

A client's operations lead emails to say patients at one clinic are getting every reminder twice. Keeper, the customer care teammate, files it as an urgent issue with her email attached. Lobo, the chief for Northstar's head of engineering, picks it up and writes one brief from the email and the client's page in the shared brain.

Mateo, a teammate running on Claude Code, builds the fix on its own computer. Freya, a teammate running on Codex, reviews it: the tests first, then a careful read, so a different engine checks the work with fresh eyes. Part of the fix means deleting 3,200 old logs, so Lobo asks the head of engineering for a yes, because deleting always waits for a person. The fix counts as done only when the tests and Freya's review pass. Keeper writes back to the client in the short, formal style the shared brain says she prefers.

The receipt shows Mateo on Claude Code at 142 credits, Freya on Codex at 58 and Lobo at 9: 209 credits, or $2.09. Two engines, three agents, two people, one job, and nobody copied anything from one tool to another.

That's the difference this list is really about. Each personal agent above is good at its part. An AI office is what lets those parts work together.

Where does each AI agent run, and who controls the data?

Where an agent runs and how it handles logins matters as much as what it can do, especially for businesses with customer data or strict rules. Here's what each company documents.

Vestra: agents run in Vestra's cloud by default, in your company's own cloud for teams whose data must stay there, or on your own premises on Enterprise, with the same rules in all three. Logins are sealed, scoped to what you allow and revocable in one tap, and the shared brain exports as plain Markdown files.
Claude Code: in the terminal it runs locally on the developer's machine and talks directly to model APIs, with no backend server or remote code index. Enterprise adds custom data controls and role-based access.
OpenAI Dot: works on its own cloud computer, with optional access to your own computer through the ChatGPT desktop app. Disconnecting an app doesn't delete what the dot already learned from it.
Perplexity Teammates: each teammate runs on its own isolated cloud computer with its own desktop and browser.
Grok Bot: your Bots share one persistent cloud computer, so browser sessions and files are visible to every Bot. Logins saved in Vault fill in without being shown to the model.
Meta Muse: works on its own secure cloud computer with a browser you share with it, and keeps logins in a credential store the agent can't read.
Hermes Agent: runs wherever you host it, from a small VPS to serverless infrastructure, with container isolation and command approval. You're responsible for securing it.
Viktor: lists SOC 2 compliance, with security review support and a ready-to-sign DPA on Enterprise.
Lindy: lists SOC 2 and GDPR compliance, with HIPAA and a signed BAA on Enterprise; data isn't used to train models.
Tasklet: lists SOC 2 Type II.

If your data has to stay in your own cloud or building, check this before anything else. If you're giving agents logins to payments or customer records, check that the agent never sees the raw credentials and that you can revoke access for every agent at once.

When is a personal AI agent enough?

A personal agent is enough when one person does the work, the results don't need to reach anyone else's agents, and that person is happy to manage the agent themselves. Plenty of good use cases fit that description.

A developer working alone in a codebase. Claude Code or Codex will make them much faster.
One person's inbox and calendar. A personal agent or Lindy handles it well.
Personal errands and life admin. Meta Muse is built exactly for this.
A one-off research project. Perplexity Teammates or Manus can take a big question end to end.
A technical tinkerer who wants full control. Hermes Agent gives them that.

You've outgrown personal agents when any of these start happening: you paste the same context into more than one agent; work waits for someone to copy it from one tool to another; you can't answer "what are all our agents doing right now?"; different people's agents follow different rules about money or approvals; or the bill for per-person subscriptions is larger than the work they save. That's the point to move to an AI office, and to bring the agents your people already like with you as teammates.

What happens when a business stacks personal agents?

When a business gives each person their own personal agents, it pays per person and per tool, and still has to connect the agents by hand. Here is how that adds up, using each vendor's published prices.

The bill multiplies by headcount

Personal agents are priced per person. For a five-person team:

Perplexity Teammates: five Perplexity Max subscriptions at $200 a month is $1,000 a month.
OpenAI Dot: five ChatGPT Pro subscriptions at $100 a month is $500 a month, or five Business Premium seats at $125 is $625.
Grok Bot: five X Premium subscriptions at $30 a month is $150 a month.
Lindy: five active users at $29.99 is about $150 a month, and every extra person who mentions it in Slack becomes a billed seat.

Add a coding agent for the developers and an automation tool for operations, and a small company can be paying for a dozen separate subscriptions, each with its own allowance, limits and bill.

The hidden cost is the glue

The bigger cost doesn't show on any invoice. With personal agents, people do the connecting work themselves:

Re-briefing each agent with the same customer context.
Copying results from one agent's app into another's.
Chasing whether each agent's work is done, and then whether it's right.
Reconciling five sets of approvals and limits when something goes wrong.

What an office changes

An AI office is priced per office. In Vestra, every plan includes your chief and the whole office, and the plan sets how many teammates you can run: 3 on Lite at $19, 20 on Pro at $97, 50 on Max at $197 and 150 on Ultra at $497. Usage is credits at one cent each, the same on every engine, with rollover. Your developers' Claude Code and Codex agents can run as teammates inside it, so you aren't paying to keep them apart. Check how any office prices additional people on your team before you compare totals.

Which AI agent is best for each team and role?

The right choice depends on the work, and on whether that work needs to reach other people's agents. Here is how the options line up by role.

Engineering

Best personal pick: Claude Code, with Codex as the main alternative. Best for the team: an office where a teammate builds on Claude Code and another reviews on Codex, with "no code reaches customers without an engineer's yes" as a written rule. In Vestra's handbook, the startup Arcwise runs Forge on Claude Code, Lens on Codex and Harbor, its support teammate, on Gemini, all working one bug queue.

Sales and business development

Best personal pick: OpenAI Dot or Lindy for one rep's inbox and follow-ups. Best for the team: a Sales teammate that reads the shared brain before every email, so it knows who signs at each account and what was promised, with first contact always waiting for a yes.

Customer support

Best single helper: Viktor or Lindy in Slack. Best for the team: a Customer care teammate with a clear list of what it can do alone, what it asks first and what it never does, that files real problems as issues for engineering's agents and writes back when they're fixed.

Finance and bookkeeping

Best for automations: Tasklet for trigger-based reminders. Best for the team: a Bookkeeping teammate that sends invoices, chases late payments and posts runway weekly, with refunds and write-offs always going to the person who owns money. Ledgerline, a bookkeeping firm in Vestra's handbook, runs intake on Gemini, reconciliation on Codex and client chasing on Vestra's own engine.

Marketing and content

Best personal pick: Meta Muse or OpenAI Dot for one marketer's drafts. Best for the team: a Content teammate that learns the house style from every correction and never publishes without a yes. The agency Fieldwork Studio in Vestra's handbook writes on Muse, researches on Grok and runs production on Vestra's own engine.

Research

Best personal pick: Perplexity Teammates. Best for the team: a Research teammate whose findings land in the shared brain with a source for every line, so Sales and Marketing use them the same day.

Solo founders and consultants

Best personal pick: any of the personal agents, depending on where you already work. Best for running a one-person business like a bigger company: an office with a few teammates on different engines. The consultant Rosa Okafor in Vestra's handbook runs Inbox on Vestra's own engine, Proposals on Muse and Money on Codex, with one rule: nothing goes to a client until she has read it.

What should you ask a vendor before buying an AI agent?

Demos show the best case. These ten questions show how an agent behaves on an ordinary Tuesday, when something goes wrong or when a second person needs it.

Who is this built for: one person, or a team of people and agents?
Can it run on more than one engine, and can I bring the coding agents my engineers already use?
What always needs a person's yes, and can any setting turn that off?
Is there a hard cap per task and per day, and what happens when it's reached?
Can I open its memory, see where each fact came from and correct it?
Does it have its own email address, phone number and computer, or does it act as me?
Can it hand work to another person's agent without someone copying it?
How does it treat instructions that arrive from outside, like a supplier's email or another company's agent?
What does it cost for my whole team, per month, including every person who will use it?
Do unused credits roll over, and can I export my data if I leave?

Write the answers down for each tool on your shortlist. The differences between personal agents, team assistants and an AI office will be obvious by question three.

How do you roll out AI agents across a business?

Roll out AI agents one job at a time, with clear goals, approvals on and receipts checked, and connect them as a team from the start instead of adding personal agents one person at a time.

List the jobs that eat your team's week. Invoices, follow-ups, support answers, reports, code reviews. Pick the one with the clearest definition of done.
Decide whether the job crosses people. If its results need to reach someone else's work, it belongs in a team, not a personal agent.
Keep the agents people already trust. If your engineers use Claude Code or Codex, choose an office where those can be engines for teammates.
Write goals you can check. "Nothing unpaid past 30 days" beats "help with invoices."
Set the hard lines first. Spending over a limit, deleting something and contacting someone new should always wait for a person. Add your own rules in a sentence.
Start with approvals on. Let each teammate earn freedom based on results: ask first, then suggest, then act and tell you.
Check the receipts weekly for the first month. Cost per job and time spent fixing tell you which teammate to expand and which needs a tighter brief.
Bring colleagues in early. The biggest gains come when each person's chief can answer and hand work to the others.

New to the idea of a team of agents? Our guide What is an AI office? explains every part.

Glossary

AI agent: software that does work on its own, taking steps toward a goal rather than only answering.
Personal AI agent: an agent built for one person, in one app, usually on one company's AI.
Team assistant: one shared AI helper used by several people, often inside chat.
AI office: one place where a business's people and AI agents work as one team, with chiefs, shared memory, one set of rules and a visible floor.
Chief: in an AI office, the agent that runs one person's other agents, speaks for them and answers to them.
Teammate: an agent hired for a whole job with goals, on the engine you pick.
Engine: the AI underneath a teammate that does the thinking and working, such as Vestra's own, Claude Code or Codex.
Shared brain: one memory for a whole team, with a source for every line.
Routine: work an agent does on a schedule or when something happens in a connected tool.
Sealed login: a credential an agent can use without ever seeing it.
Credit: the unit most agents bill in; in Vestra, one credit is one cent on every engine.

FAQ

What is the best AI agent for business?

It depends on whether you need help for one person or a team. For one developer, Claude Code; for one ChatGPT user, OpenAI Dot; for research, Perplexity Teammates. If you need agents working together across a business, an AI office like Vestra runs them as one team, from $19 a month.

What is an AI agent for business?

Software that does work on its own, not just answers questions. You give it a goal, and it takes the steps: using your apps, browsing the web, writing code, sending email or making calls. For a business, the bigger question is whether your agents can work together.

What's the difference between a personal AI agent and an AI office?

A personal agent works for one person, in one app, usually on one company's AI. An AI office runs many agents as one team for a business, with chiefs, a shared memory, one set of rules, a choice of engine per agent and a view of the whole team at work.

Can I use Claude Code, Codex or Grok inside Vestra?

Yes. You pick the engine for each teammate: Vestra's own, Claude Code or Codex, with Gemini, Grok and Muse in the engine picker. Every teammate shares the same memory, approvals, caps and receipts, whichever engine it runs on.

Why not just give everyone their own personal agent?

Each person would get help, but the agents wouldn't share what they learn, couldn't hand work to each other and would each come with their own bill and rules. Someone still has to brief, carry and chase between them. An office puts them on one team.

Which AI agent is best for small businesses?

If you want one helper for one job, a personal agent or Lindy can work. If you want several jobs handed over and your agents working together, Vestra starts at $19 a month for up to 3 teammates, with 1,000 free credits to start.

Which AI agent is best for developers?

Claude Code is one of the strongest coding agents, with Codex as the main alternative. For a team, run both inside an office: one teammate builds on Claude Code and another reviews on Codex.

How much do AI agents for business cost?

Entry prices in this list range from free (Hermes, Meta Muse, Manus, Tasklet) to $200 a month (Perplexity Max). Personal agents are usually priced per person, so a team pays several times over. Compare the total for your whole team and check whether unused credits roll over.

Are AI agents safe to use with business data?

They can be, if the controls are enforced by the product: approvals the agent can't switch off, hard spending caps, sealed logins and a record of every action. With many personal agents, you have to check those controls in every tool separately.

Do AI agents replace employees?

They take over repetitive, well-defined work, like follow-ups, reports and data entry, which frees people for judgment, relationships and decisions. Most businesses start with one recurring job, check the results for a few weeks and expand from there.

What is an AI chief of staff?

In an AI office, a chief is an agent that runs one person's other agents, speaks for them to colleagues' chiefs and answers only to them, with a morning brief and one-tap decisions.

Can AI agents from different companies work together?

Not inside most personal agents, which each live in their own maker's app. In an AI office, agents on different engines become teammates under one chief, and in Vestra's design, clients' chiefs can work with yours through the front door, each side sharing only what it chooses.

What should my first AI agent do?

A recurring job with a clear result you can check: chasing invoices, answering common customer questions, a weekly market note or code review. Avoid starting with anything that can't be undone.

Is there a free AI agent for business?

Several have free tiers: Meta Muse, Manus, Tasklet, Viktor's free credits and Lindy's 7-day credits. Hermes Agent is free and open source but you pay for hosting and models. Every new Vestra office starts with 1,000 free credits.

Sources

All other products were checked against their own websites, docs and help pages on 10 November 2026. This compares documented features and published prices, not hands-on tests. Prices change, so check each vendor before you buy.