Eight products, four properties you can check yourself. Every fact links to the vendor's own page, dated September 1, 2026. Where a vendor says nothing, we write "not stated" — never "no".
Model quality and taste change weekly and can't be checked. These four are structural — published or not — and they decide whether work survives after you stop watching.
One container per customer, with its own disk and address — not a sandbox reclaimed after each task.
Jobs continue after the tab closes, and the results are waiting when you come back.
Recurring work on your schedule, running with nobody present, with a stated limit.
What each job actually cost after it ran, in units you can audit against a published rate.
| Product | Entry price | Usage unit | Dedicated machine | Standing orders | Per-job cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Second Machine | $29 / mo | Tokens | One container, yours | 1 / 5 / 20 per plan | Tokens + dollars, per job |
| ChatGPTsource ↗ | $20 · $200 | Messages | Not stated | Hourly at most; 5 on Plus | No |
| Claude (Pro / Max)source ↗ | $17 · $100+ | 5-hour limits | Per-session, reclaimed | Routines | No |
| Perplexity Computersource ↗ | $20 · $200 | Credits | Per task, not dedicated | Hourly floor, 15 / thread | Ranges only |
| Manussource ↗ | $20 · $40 | Credits | Not stated | 20 on Pro | Credit history |
| Genspark Clawsource ↗ | Not stated | Credits | Dedicated computer | Yes | No |
| Maritimesource ↗ | $20 for 20 agents | Flat, unmetered | Micro-VM per agent | Cron | No — flat by design |
| Hosted OpenClaw (ClawCloud)source ↗ | $29 · $49 · $109 | Server specs | One per server | Not stated | No |
| Hostinger Managed OpenClawsource ↗ | $5.99 → $11.99 | Compute + credits | Isolated instance | Scheduled queues | No |
Green: a published yes. Amber: partial — it exists with a limit, or a range instead of a settled figure. Grey: a published no, or unaddressed.
A $20 message tier and a $29 machine plan buy different things. Entry price shows the shape of each offer, not a winner.
Send the vendor page that contradicts a cell. We fix it and print the correction date on the row.
A table that flatters its publisher is worth nothing. Here is where a reader should choose a competitor, stated as plainly as the table above.
$20 for twenty agents, flat, nothing metered. If you want many small always-on agents and don't care what each run cost, take that deal.
No ceiling to hit, no top-up to configure. Metering only wins if you want to see the cost — some people genuinely don't.
Frontier models, apps, voice, images, and huge integration ecosystems. On raw capability and breadth, it is not close.
Support hours, compliance paperwork, uptime history. If procurement asks for those, ask for them before price.
We win on exactly two axes: a container that is yours alone, and a full record of every job it runs. Everything else here is someone else's strength.