Grok Bot vs Muse vs Dots vs Copilot Studio vs Octopus22: which AI agent platform suits you?

In eight weeks the AI agent market changed shape. SpaceXAI launched Grok Bot on August 11. Meta launched Muse on September 8. OpenAI launched Dots on September 29. And Microsoft kept filling Teams with agents built in Copilot Studio.

On paper they look alike. Almost all of them give an agent its own cloud computer, connect it to your apps, remember context, run on a schedule and ask before risky actions. The differences are in who each one is built for: who owns the agent, where it lives, how it's set up, what it costs and what it does best. That is what this article is about.

Disclosure: we make Octopus22. Every claim about the other four links to official docs, launch coverage or reviews, and where a source is itself a competing vendor, we say so. Octopus22 is held to the same standard. There are no independent reviews of it yet, so the claims about it are ours, checked against our own code. Everything was checked on October 5, 2026. These products change weekly.

Who each platform suits, at a glance

Individuals who want errands done: Meta Muse

Muse · personal errands

Book a table for four on FridayDone

Reorder detergent, $18.40Awaiting your OK

Pay the electricity bill with LinkEvery month

Why Muse fits. Muse is the most developed of the five for buying things and running a household.

• It shops at retailers like Walmart, Best Buy, Sephora and Wayfair, and pays through Link by Stripe, so it never sees your card (Meta, TechCrunch).
• A separate safety agent, Sentinel, has to approve anything Muse sends to the internet.
• Approvals are fine-grained: allow once, for this task, for this site, or always, with undo and an activity log (Meta Help).
• It also handles one-time, recurring and location-based tasks (Meta Help), voice conversations, and apps on your Mac.
• It has a free tier. Paid tiers are reported at $20 and $100 a month (third-party report).

What reviewers found. It's strong at planning-heavy jobs like a night out, a move or trip emails, and patchy at shopping. Amazon objected to Muse and asked Meta to remove it, and some sites need you to finish the purchase yourself (AgentSonic, Retail Dive). The biggest concern reviewers raise is whether to trust Meta with this much personal data (TechCrunch).

Trade-offs.

• It's available in the US and Canada only (iPhone in Canada).
• Each Muse belongs to one person. There's no family or staff sharing, and group chat support is still in development (TestingCatalog).

Also consider Dots if you already pay for ChatGPT Pro and want one agent for both life admin and work.

Solo owners running a small business: Muse for Small Business

Muse for Small Business · one owner

3 new Instagram ad draftsAwaiting your OK

September finance review from QuickBooksReady

Shopify: 4 products low on stockFlagged

Why it fits. Launched on September 29, it connects to Instagram, Facebook Pages and Meta ads, plus Shopify, QuickBooks, Stripe, Slack, Notion, Canva, Figma, Klaviyo and more. Meta demos it on growth plans, ad analysis, monthly finance reviews and inbox triage, and "nothing publishes, sends, or spends without your approval" (Meta). For a one-person business already marketing on Meta, that combination at Muse's prices is hard to match.

Trade-offs. It's built for a single owner. There's no documented way to give staff access (Engadget).

Also consider Grok Bot if your work is spread across many tools, or you want to teach it a task by showing it once.

Professionals who want one capable agent: OpenAI Dots

Dots · one agent, many kinds of work

Tested pull request

Updated sales proposal

Edited launch video

Redesigned website

Owner directs it. Teammates can see its work and add context.

Why Dots fits. Dots has the broadest range of work of the personal agents, and the biggest app catalog, with more than 4,000 apps (Dots docs). OpenAI's demos and early reviews cover a wide range of work, from turning feedback into tested pull requests to updating a sales proposal, editing video and redesigning and deploying a website (The Verge, AI for Mortals). One reviewer's Dot caught a billing failure nobody had asked about.

How it works.

• Always running: your Dot keeps working on its own cloud computer after you close the chat, can also work on your own computer, and decides when to pause and wake.
• Where you reach it: you can message or call it in ChatGPT on desktop, on the web and in the mobile app, or work with it in Slack and Teams (Dots docs).
• Shared pages: with ChatGPT Space, colleagues edit shared pages together and can @mention their Dots in them (OpenAI).

Team features, precisely. At launch you get one Dot, and only its owner can direct it. Colleagues can see its work and add context, but their messages don't start work (OpenAI admin docs). OpenAI describes "teams of Dots" working together as a future goal. Company-owned "specialist Dots" with their own identity, for jobs like procurement, invoices and support, are in enterprise pilots.

Trade-offs.

• Price: your first Dot comes with ChatGPT Pro or Business Premium, and Pro isn't sold in the EU, the UK or Switzerland (Dots docs). Plan prices are reported at $100 a month and up for Pro, and about $100 to $125 per seat for Business Premium (third-party report).
• Early reviews: reviewers saw sites block its browser and slow responses, and The Verge's reviewer didn't find it "$100-a-month handy" for her own work.

Also consider Grok Bot if you'd rather have several specialized agents than one generalist.

Engineering and operations teams: Grok Bot

Grok Bot · started by events

ScheduleSlack messageGitHub notification

→

Triage bot

Review bot

Fix bot

Why Grok Bot fits. Its routines can start on their own, up to 50 per bot (Grok Bot docs):

• on a schedule
• when a Slack message arrives
• when a GitHub notification arrives

It can pass coding tasks to Cursor's cloud agents (docs). SpaceXAI says a five-person engineering team produces over 100 pull requests a day with one (Tesla North). You can also teach it a browser task by showing it once.

Team features.

• Group chats: 2 to 6 bots each. The bots decide who answers, @mention each other and hand work off (docs).
• Team Bots: an owner configures a bot once and publishes it to the team, with ready-made bots for sales, product, marketing and data (Tesla North).
  • Each person gets a private chat, plus shared team memory.
  • When a plugin needs a sign-in, it uses the account of whoever is talking to the bot.
  • In Slack channels, several people can work with the same bot (Team Bots docs).
• Security and enterprise controls: SAML single sign-on, and Grok Bot is in scope for ISO 27001 and ISO 42001 (security docs). SCIM and audit logs are on Enterprise. The Enterprise plan adds action recording and OpenTelemetry export (docs).

What reviewers found. One reviewer built 12 bots in about eight hours and liked that it delivers finished work (Nate's Newsletter). Another found setup quick and the connectors broad, but said it isn't ready for regulated industries yet (Big Hat Group). All bots on an account share one computer, and xAI says not to treat separate bots as a security boundary (docs). CellCog, a competing vendor, cites user reports of weekly limits running out fast and a stuck shared computer taking every bot on an account offline (CellCog).

Price. It comes with Cursor and SuperGrok plans rather than as a standalone product, with usage on top. Third-party sources put the cheapest entry at $20 to $30 a month, while one review frames it as a $200-a-month decision. We couldn't confirm prices on an official page.

Also consider Copilot Studio if your engineering org runs on Microsoft 365 and needs its governance.

Companies on Microsoft 365: Teams with Copilot Studio

Teams + Copilot Studio · inside your meetings and channels

Facilitator: live notes and decisions in the meetingGenerally available

Channel Agent: weekly status for #launchPreview

Project Manager: 6 Planner tasks from the meetingPreview

Every agent has its own Entra identityGoverned

Why it fits. If your company already works in Teams, Outlook and SharePoint, this is the only option where agents live inside the tools you use all day, with your company's identity and compliance built in. It also has the most ready-made agents (Microsoft):

• Facilitator (generally available) takes live notes, answers questions in the meeting chat and helps run the meeting (Microsoft Support).
• Channel Agent (preview) answers questions about a channel's work, drafts status reports and manages tasks.
• Project Manager (preview) creates Planner tasks from meetings.
• Researcher, Analyst and live translation are generally available.

Building your own. Anyone can build a simple agent by describing it in plain language with Agent Builder. Copilot Studio goes much further (what's new):

• no-code to low-code building
• computer use (generally available)
• multi-agent orchestration
• agent-to-agent connections

Governance and results. Every agent gets its own Entra identity, and Agent 365 lets IT see and govern every agent in one place. Capita reports Microsoft 365 Copilot saving around 9,000 hours a month; its most-used agent searches its SharePoint estate (Microsoft).

Team features. Agents work in Teams channels, group chats and meetings, and by default respond when @mentioned. Reading every message needs the owner's approval. Agents can message one person privately inside a group conversation, and meeting agents can follow the live transcript (Microsoft Learn, dev blog, Microsoft).

Trade-offs.

• Cost:
  • Microsoft 365 Copilot is $30 per user per month for Enterprise, or $21 for Copilot Business ($18 under a promotion through December 2026), on top of your Microsoft 365 plan (Microsoft).
  • Agent 365 is $15 per user per month, or included in Microsoft 365 E7 at $99 (Microsoft).
  • Agents for customers and some heavier tasks use pay-as-you-go credits (Microsoft Learn).
• Previews and limits:
  • Several team agents are still in preview.
  • Channel Agent doesn't work in channels with guests (Office 365 IT Pros).
  • Agent Builder agents can't join group chats (Microsoft Learn).

Also consider Dots if you want a strong personal agent that also works inside Teams.

Small teams that want people and agents in one shared workspace: Octopus22

Octopus22 · people and teammates in one conversation

Can we close September this week?

On it. Cole, can you reconcile Stripe? I’ll chase the receipts.

Starting now.

Noor (marketing) stayed quiet

Why Octopus22 fits. Octopus22 is a dedicated workspace where several people and several AI teammates share the same conversations, outside Slack or Teams. Each teammate belongs to one member and can be shared with the whole company.

• Routing: an AI model decides which teammates each message is for, so only they reply.
• Working together:
  • Several teammates can take their parts of one request side by side.
  • They hand work to each other by name.
  • They split big jobs across background helpers.
  • They can create a new teammate when the work needs one.
• Company Brain: an AI model picks out lasting facts from every conversation, private chats included, and adds them to one shared memory every teammate can draw on. Personal preferences stay private to the person.
• Approvals: reading runs freely, and an AI model checks every other action and pauses anything that sends, pays or deletes for a person's approval. Owners can set individual tools to "always allow".
• The basics: each teammate gets its own screen on a cloud computer, works in 500+ apps plus custom MCP connections and any website, and sets its own schedule.
• Price: $49, $99 or $199 per member per month, with a 7-day free trial.
  • Each plan includes 40,000, 80,000 or 160,000 credits per member, priced at model cost plus 25%. Included credits don't roll over. When they run out, work pauses until you buy more or the next billing period starts.
  • Plans allow 3, 6 or 12 teammates working at the same time.
  • SSO, SCIM and the audit log require the $199 plan.

Trade-offs.

• No independent reviews yet, and it's newer and smaller than the others.
• A shared teammate still acts with its owner's connected accounts and computer, so colleagues who chat with it work through the owner's logins. Grok's Team Bots use each person's own sign-in instead.
• Like Grok Bot, all of one person's teammates share one cloud computer.
• Teammates live in the Octopus22 app, not inside Slack or Teams.
• They can't yet be started by outside events like a Slack message, a GitHub notification or an email. Grok Bot and Copilot Studio can react to some of these.
• 500+ apps is far fewer than Dots' 4,000+.
• Single sign-on supports OIDC but not SAML yet.
• There are no ready-made role or meeting agents like Grok's pre-built Team Bots or Microsoft's Facilitator.

Also consider Grok Bot's Team Bots if your team lives in Slack and wants bots that react to Slack and GitHub activity, or Copilot Studio if it lives in Teams.

Side-by-side

Still not sure? Ask these four questions

1. Is it for one person or a team? For one person, Muse and Dots are the most polished. For a team, look at Copilot Studio, Grok Bot's Team Bots or Octopus22.
2. What starts the work? If agents should react to events, Copilot Studio has the widest range of triggers, and Grok Bot reacts to Slack messages and GitHub notifications. If work starts from people asking or from a schedule, all five do.
3. Where does your team already talk?
   • In Teams: Copilot Studio, or Dots inside Teams.
   • In Slack: Grok Bot or Dots.
   • In a dedicated space outside Slack or Teams, where people and several agents share conversations: Octopus22, though it has no independent reviews yet.
4. How much setup and cost can you take on? Muse and Dots are built for one person to start quickly, and reviewers found Grok Bot quick to set up too. Copilot Studio is the most powerful to customize and govern, and the most work and cost to run.

There's no single best AI agent in 2026, only the best fit for how you work. If you want people and several AI teammates working in one shared space, you can see how Octopus22 teammates work or try it free for 7 days.