Numa vs Manus
Both do the work. Only one of them gets to know you.
Manus and Numa belong to the same shift: assistants that act, not only answer. Give either a goal and it will plan, use tools and come back with a result. On a single task, the gap is smaller than any comparison page admits.
The difference is what happens over a hundred tasks.
Where the work happens
Manus-style agents run in a cloud computer of their own: a browser, a workspace, a disposable machine. That is a good fit for web research, form filling, isolated runs you do not want on your own computer.
Numa runs beside you, on the computer you already use: your apps, your files, the browser sessions you are already logged into, the workflow you taught it by recording yourself once. The goal is not to give the agent a separate computer; it is to let it help on yours.
The model is not the product
Both products run the same frontier models; Numa lets you choose which. What differs is the harness, and Numa's harness was built around one thing the model does not have on its own: memory of you.
A model's context has a limit, and every tool that re-reads the conversation hits it and summarises. Numa remembers instead of re-reading, so a conversation can run for months without the assistant quietly losing what you said. In our five-conversation test, 340 to 356 messages each over months, Numa kept 90 to 96% of the details we planted while carrying about the same amount per message from the first week to the last; the tools that re-read everything cost 8.6 to 12.2 times more and kept 63 to 93%. Full results: the 6 October note (/news/1.5.8). We have not run Manus through the same test and will not claim a number we have not measured.
An intern, not a vending machine
An agent that takes a goal and disappears comes back with something generic, because it never learned what you like, why the last version was wrong, or what you were going to do next. Numa is built to ask when it should, to make mistakes and keep your corrections, and to report what it did. It is slower on day one. It is yours by day ninety.
One thing at a time
Manus can run many tasks in parallel, far from you. Numa deliberately does not. Attention in one field is what makes a person good at their work, and the same is true of the assistant beside them. Numa is for scoped work done well, with you in the loop, on your machine.
Side by side, honestly
As of October 2026; competitor features change often, check their pages.
| Feature | Manus | Numa |
|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | Its own cloud computer | Your desktop (macOS, Windows) |
| Models | Its selection | Your choice, any major lab |
| Memory of you over months | Session-oriented | Built around it; measured |
| Learns a workflow by watching you | No | Yes, by recording |
| Your logged-in apps and local files | Through uploads and its browser | Directly |
| Parallel tasks | Yes | No, by design |
| Scheduled runs, watchers | Yes | Yes |
| Phone app to follow work | Yes | Yes |
| Voice, canvas | Varies | Yes |
Bottom line
If the work is a one-off that lives entirely in a browser and you want it off your machine, a cloud agent fits. If the work is yours, repeated, in your own apps, and you want an assistant that knows you better each month, that is what Numa is built for.
Suggested internal links:
- /desktop-ai-agent
- /computer-use-ai
- /news/1.5.8
- /use-cases/automate-desktop-apps