Manus Launches Cloud Computer — Persistent Ubuntu VMs for 24/7 AI Agents (April 30, 2026)

Manus on April 30, 2026 publicly launched Cloud Computer, a persistent Ubuntu virtual machine that runs the company's AI agent — and the user's own bots, scripts, and services — 24/7 without spinning down between sessions. The release pushes Manus from a request-response agent into a continuously running cloud workspace that retains files and state across sessions.

What Happened

Butterfly Effect, the Singapore-headquartered startup behind Manus, announced Cloud Computer in a blog post titled "Introducing Cloud Computer: Lowering the Barrier to Building." The product gives every paying Manus user a dedicated machine in the cloud — a real Ubuntu environment, not just an ephemeral sandbox — that the agent operates on the user's behalf and that the user can also reach directly via SSH or a web terminal. According to coverage by TestingCatalog and Phemex on May 2, 2026, the launch is rolling out to all Manus users now, with three tiers (Basic, Standard, Advanced) that vary CPU, memory, storage, and region.

The headline shift versus prior Manus sandboxes is persistence: previously each task spun up a fresh container that disappeared when the task finished. With Cloud Computer, files, installed packages, databases, and long-running processes survive between sessions, making the product viable for hosted services rather than just one-off agent runs.

Key Details

• Persistent Ubuntu VM: a dedicated Linux machine per user (or team) that keeps state across sessions, replacing the prior ephemeral sandbox model.
• Dual access: the Manus agent operates the machine via natural-language instructions, but humans can also SSH in or open a web terminal from the Manus dashboard.
• Hosting-grade workloads: Manus explicitly targets long-running bots on Slack and Discord, scheduled reports, live databases, and self-hosted apps like WordPress and Metabase.
• Three plans: Basic, Standard, and Advanced, with users choosing CPU, memory, storage, and a deployment region per machine.
• Isolation & team access: machines run in isolated environments with controlled team-level access, per the Manus announcement.

What Developers and Users Are Saying

Reaction has been mixed. On Hacker News, several commenters welcomed the always-on model for hobby automation and side-project hosting, while others challenged the technical differentiation, pointing out that Manus rides on top of frontier models rather than running its own. The most-upvoted critique remains a perennial Manus complaint: research-style tasks reportedly succeed 70–80% of the time, and reliability degrades on longer multi-step workflows. On Reddit's r/AI_Agents and r/singularity, early adopters described Cloud Computer as the first Manus update that genuinely makes a Discord bot or scheduled scraper feel native to the platform — but others called the pricing tiers opaque and asked for transparent CPU/RAM specs.

What This Means for Developers

For developers, Cloud Computer turns Manus from "an agent you talk to" into something closer to a managed VPS that an agent happens to operate. That changes the comparison set: instead of being benchmarked only against ChatGPT agents and Claude's Computer Use, Manus now overlaps with Cloudflare Sandboxes (launched during Agents Week 2026), E2B sandboxes, and traditional VPS providers like DigitalOcean and Linode. Teams already running Slack or Discord bots have a new option that bundles model access, the runtime, and a real filesystem in one bill. The catch is portability: workloads built around Manus's natural-language operator interface are less portable than equivalent code running on a generic VM.

What's Next

Cloud Computer is generally available as of April 30, 2026 via the Manus dashboard on web and mobile. Manus has not published a public pricing matrix beyond the three plan names — interested users will see specifics when they pick a plan in-app. The launch lands amid a tense corporate backdrop: reporting in early May suggested Beijing has moved to block any foreign acquisition of Butterfly Effect, complicating earlier reports of a Meta deal. Expect closer scrutiny of how state-level export controls affect Cloud Computer customers outside China.

Sources

• Introducing Cloud Computer — Manus official blog — primary announcement and product description.
• TestingCatalog: Manus launches Cloud Computer with service hosting — independent product walkthrough.
• Phemex News: Manus Launches Cloud Computer for 24/7 Bot Operation — coverage of plans and use cases.
• JLS Blog: Claude Security, Manus Cloud Computer, NVIDIA OpenShell — May 2, 2026 industry roundup placing the launch in context.
• Manus (AI agent) — Wikipedia — company background on Butterfly Effect, founders, and prior funding.
• Hacker News: Leave It to Manus — community discussion thread.