Manus AI Website Builder: Build, Host and Pay for a Site

Manus AI builds a website or a full-stack web app from a plain-language description, with backend, database, user login, AI features and payments, then hosts it on Manus. You pay in two currencies. Building and editing spend credits from your plan. Once the site is live, hosting, the database, in-site AI and outside API calls draw on a separate usage balance, which comes with free allowances of $10 Cloud, $1 AI and $1 API each billing cycle ^[1]. A custom domain needs an active paid subscription. It suits a founder who wants a working app without code. It frustrates anyone who wants a drag-and-drop editor.

Before the first prompt: mode, place and plan

Manus offers four agent modes for site work, and its docs map each one to a job. Manus 2.0 Max is meant for full-stack apps that need a backend, database, login or payments. Manus 2.0 covers most websites. Manus 2.0 Lite handles small edits, and Manus Flex, still in beta, runs on your own model API key. Free accounts get Lite only, the mode the docs recommend for small edits, while full-stack builds are mapped to Manus 2.0 Max, a paid mode. The 300 daily refresh credits also work only in Lite on every plan.

Where you build matters as much. In Manus Cloud the project lives in the browser. In Manus Studio (the desktop app, formerly Manus Desktop) it builds in a folder on your own computer, at the same credit rate as a cloud task. A local preview opens only on that machine, so showing it to a client means publishing or continuing the task in the cloud. Manus Studio asks for permission before a local project goes live, and a plain local project uses only your own tools, with no Manus hosting at all.

The entry point for custom domains, built-in SEO and editing a deployed site is Pro at $20 a month (4,000 credits), or $200 a year on annual billing. By our arithmetic, the yearly charge saves $40 a year against twelve monthly payments. One rule changes how you budget: Manus cannot estimate a build's credit cost before it starts, and unused plan credits do not roll over. Our Manus AI pricing guide covers the credit rules in full.

From prompt to working app, step by step

A build is a conversation, but the pieces arrive in a predictable order. You ask, Manus builds, you review the preview and ask again. Each round spends credits, so vague requests cost more than specific ones. These are the parts the docs describe, roughly in the order a small business would add them:

1. Describe the site, or hand over a design. Paste a shared Figma frame link and Manus generates the frontend and backend from it; attach several frames and explain how they connect.
2. Add accounts. The built-in login system covers registration, login, logout and user management, with role-based access to specific pages.
3. Add data. Projects with the database feature get a managed MySQL database with a visual data browser, plus analytics for visitors, page views and traffic sources.
4. Add payments. Choose Stripe or Shopify, never both.
5. Add AI. Sites can call LLM features on ten models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, billed per token from the AI allowance.
6. Add timed jobs. In-app schedules run as often as once a minute, up to five per app, in UTC, with up to three attempts on failure.

Payments deserve a second look. With Stripe, Manus sets up a claimable sandbox with no signup, creates products and webhooks, and you go live by creating your own Stripe account and passing its identity checks. Shopify works on paid plans only. Manus can create a development store, which you must claim within 30 days or Shopify removes it. The store takes real payments only after you claim it and choose a paid Shopify plan, which Shopify bills separately from Manus. Checkout, shipping and taxes stay in Shopify's hosted checkout. Once a project connects Shopify, it cannot switch to Stripe.

Publishing: two hosting modes and a second bill

Publishing moves the site from credits to usage billing. Autoscale is the default: it runs on Google Cloud Run with 1 vCPU and 512 MB per instance, scales from zero to five instances, defaults to a US region and costs $0 when idle. The price of that is cold starts, and it does not support background workers or queues. Reserved keeps one process always on, with no cold starts and no request timeout, for WebSockets, workers and bots. Reserved runs up to about $36 a month at full utilization ^[2]. You can switch modes in project settings.

Beyond the subscription, Manus estimates typical monthly usage at about $24 for a marketing site with lead capture, $128 for a content and search site and $248 for an e-commerce or marketplace site, while a creator landing page stays inside the allowances ^[3]. Treat those as estimates, not quotes. With auto top-up off, a banner appears when the AI and API allowance and the wallet are used up; when the Cloud allowance and wallet are both spent, visitors see a site-down page. A Redis data cache adds $0.75 a month if it is on at month end. Its data is deleted when the Cloud balance runs out.

Domains, search and who sees the site

You can connect a domain you already own or buy one inside the builder, and Manus sets up a free SSL certificate either way. Custom domains and subdomain changes are for paid users ^[4]. Domains bought through Manus are non-refundable. You can transfer one out with an EPP code from Settings once the 60-day transfer lock has passed. The subscription ties it all together. If it ends, a custom-domain site goes offline, while a site on a manus.space address can stay up on the free allowance or the usage balance.

Built-in SEO is also a paid-plan feature. It serves prerendered HTML to search bots, generates canonical URLs, robots.txt and dynamic sitemaps, and adds an SEO score with an Optimize with Manus button. Privacy is thinner. There is no Private Publish option: you restrict access by sharing the project by email with specific visitors or by publishing inside a team. Over the API, republishing without a visibility value turns a private or team-only site public again.

Getting your code, and your mobile app, out

Manus says there is no lock-in, and the mechanics back that up. You can download the frontend and backend code at any time, or sync the project two ways with a new private GitHub repository. That sync is fragile. Renaming the repository or changing its owner breaks the connection, and a repository Manus did not create cannot be synced. Two deletions also matter. Deleting the task that generated a website deletes the website, and a suspended account takes every linked site offline. Keep a GitHub copy.

Mobile apps work differently from websites. Manus builds iOS and Android apps with Expo and prepares test builds, not store listings. The iOS build goes to App Store Connect for TestFlight, and the Android App Bundle is yours to upload to a Google Play Console testing track. You submit for public review yourself, with your own Apple Developer or Google Play Developer account and an Expo token. Expo's free plan allows 15 Android builds a calendar month, shared across all your projects. Approval stays with Apple.

Manus next to Lovable, Base44 and Replit

If you came here weighing Manus against a dedicated builder, start with what Manus's own Hostinger comparison page concedes: no drag-and-drop editor, no template library and no bundled free domain. Everything happens through the agent, in words. The upside is breadth: the same subscription also covers research, slides and automations. Owner-operators who want the wider picture of running a business on Manus can read our Manus AI guide for small business.

Lovable is the closest like-for-like for web apps; its backend runs on Supabase and it does not build native mobile apps. Its Pro with 100 credits costs $25 a month billed monthly or $21 a month billed annually. Base44, operated by Wix.com Ltd., starts its paid tiers with Starter at $20 a month billed monthly or $16 a month billed annually. Its store-ready wrapper, which runs the web app inside a native web view, needs the Builder plan or higher, $50 a month billed monthly or $40 a month billed annually. Replit builds native mobile apps with Expo and ships iOS builds through TestFlight, with no Google Play publishing yet. Core costs $20 a month billed monthly or $18 a month billed annually. Our Manus AI alternatives compare these and general agents.

The bottom line

Manus is a sound pick when the brief is a working app rather than a pretty page: login, database, payments and hosting come from one conversation, and the code leaves with you. The costs are where buyers trip. Credits for the build cannot be estimated in advance, hosting runs on its own usage balance, and a custom-domain site goes offline when the subscription ends. Budget for both bills, keep a GitHub copy, and expect test builds, not store listings, for mobile apps.