{"slug": "openmausbot-open-source-grok-bot-alternative-with-a-virtual-machine", "title": "OpenMausBot Open-source Grok Bot alternative with a virtual machine", "summary": "OpenMausBot launched as a free, Apache 2.0 open-source desktop app that gives each AI bot its own computer, positioning it as an alternative to Grok Bot. The app runs bots on the Claude, Codex and Grok CLIs already installed on a user's machine using their own logins and subscriptions, with a single local server on 127.0.0.1 managing every agent process and storing transcripts, keys and events in ~/.openmausbot. A paid Cloud plan starts at $15/month, with $49/month and $99/month tiers, so bots keep working with the laptop closed; model usage is billed separately by the user's provider.", "body_md": "### Every bot gets a computer\n\nIn the free app: a cloud desktop from a provider you connect, spun up on its own with a live screen preview. Or point the bot at this Mac.\n\nInvoice #1055 for $430 was due 3 days ago. The PDF is attached.\n\ninvoice-1055.pdf\nThe open source Grok Bot alternative. Free and open source. Bring your AI account or API key. Provider fees and limits apply.\n\nStart with one bot and one provider. No connected apps or cloud computer needed.\n\n[Choose your computer’s installer](https://mausbot.com/download#installers) and open MausBot. The phone apps are companions; start on your computer.\n\nUse the onboarding engine check to install and sign in to one supported agent, such as Claude Code or Codex. Follow its install or sign-in instructions, then check again. You can also find this in App settings → Agent engines.\n\nSelect New or share → New bot. Give it a name, choose the connected engine and an available model. A working folder is only needed for tasks involving files.\n\nAsk your bot to plan your day, summarize notes, or draft an email. Start with one clear request and review its answer.\n\nGive each bot a job, a brain, and a computer. They run in parallel on your own machine, and come back when something needs you.\n\nClaude and Codex side by side, defaults marked. Switch a bot's model mid-conversation.\n\nGmail, Slack, GitHub, Notion, Linear and hundreds more over Composio. OAuth once, every bot can use them.\n\nPin, mark unread, duplicate, hide, delete. It's a messaging app, and your agents behave like contacts.\n\nHit call and it's a conversation. It hears you, narrates its work, and asks for approvals out loud. Live calls work on every plan, with your own OpenAI key.\n\nOn it. Sending them now.\n\nPaste credentials once and the provider fleet hot-reloads. Add a treg key and bots research X, companies, people, trends and search results. Secrets are write-only.\n\nSay “when I get an email from Acme, draft a reply” and it's set up: on a schedule, on a webhook, or when something happens in Gmail, Slack, HubSpot or Stripe. Gmail is checked every 15 minutes, other apps within seconds.\n\nBots run on the claude, codex, and grok CLIs already installed on your computer, using your logins and your subscriptions, with no proxy in the middle.\n\nA single server on 127.0.0.1 owns every agent process and normalizes each provider's native protocol into one event stream.\n\nTranscripts, keys, and events live in ~/.openmausbot on your own disk. Local-first is the default, not a setting.\n\nPick a job to see what its bot reports back, and what it waits for you to approve.\n\nFinds the deals that went quiet, works out who owes the next step, and drafts each follow-up. Nothing sends until you approve it.\n\nEvery bot borrows a brain, a pair of hands, and a set of keys. These are the companies behind each one. [Want your product here? Become a partner](https://mausbot.com/partners).\n\nSwap setups, ask for help with your own bots, follow releases as they ship, and tell us what to build next. The maintainers are in there every day.\n\nShare a workflow: include the task, a screenshot with private details removed, and the result. Tell us whether we may feature it and how to credit you. We’ll add approved examples to the showcase.\n\nThe desktop app comes in 10 languages. It follows your computer's language, and you can switch any time in Settings.\n\nSome translations are still growing, so a few screens may show English for now.\n\nThe app is free. A Cloud plan gives your bots their own cloud machine, so they keep working with your laptop closed.\n\n$15/month\n\nWhat you get\n\n$49/month\n\n$99/month\n\n*An estimate, not a limit: a bot at work uses about 0.5–1 GB of memory, so this is roughly how many can work at the same moment.\n\nAllowances reset on the 1st of each month (UTC). A small computer counts as half an hour. Bring your own Claude or ChatGPT account, or an API key. Model usage is billed by your provider.\n\nThe MausBot desktop and companion apps are free and open source under Apache 2.0. Model usage is separate: bring a supported provider account or API key. Your provider’s pricing, usage limits, and terms apply. A subscription to one provider does not include access to other providers. Cloud hosting and some optional services cost extra.\n\nDesktop downloads are available for macOS (Apple silicon and Intel), 64-bit Windows, and x86-64 Linux (.deb and AppImage). Android and iOS have companion apps, shared in our Discord. See the download page for platform requirements and installation steps.\n\nNo. You can start by chatting with a bot using one connected provider. Connect an app or enable computer access only when a task needs it. Those integrations can have their own accounts, permissions, and charges.\n\nAccess depends on the engine, working folder, connected apps, and computer permissions you enable. Supported actions can show approval requests in chat. Review the requested action before allowing it; approval coverage depends on the engine and tool, so it is not a guarantee that every action will pause. Start with a small task and a dedicated working folder.\n\nThe desktop app keeps local conversation and workspace data on your computer. Your prompts and relevant context are sent to the model provider you choose; connected apps receive the data needed for their actions. A Cloud workspace stores and processes its workspace data on the hosted server. Local storage does not mean model requests stay on your device.\n\nThe phone app is a companion that connects to the computer or server hosting your bots. For the free desktop setup, keep MausBot open and your computer awake and connected to the internet. Pairing a phone does not move your bots to the cloud.\n\nBots hosted on that computer cannot work while it is asleep, offline, or shut down. To keep working independently of your laptop, you need an always-on host, such as a separately configured server or the optional paid MausBot Cloud workspace.\n\nStart with the installation instructions on the download page. For questions, join Discord support. For reproducible bugs, open a GitHub issue with your operating system, app version, and steps to reproduce. Remove credentials and private content before sharing logs or screenshots.\n\nFree and open source. Connect one supported provider and start with a useful task. Provider fees and limits apply.\n\nIn their own words, on X.\n\nWhat we ship, as we ship it.\n\nI made an Open Source version of the Grok Bot complete with all the features\nIt does not need any subscriptions at all and uses the existing subscriptions you already have\nIt can spin up virtual machines from [@asciidotdev](https://x.com/asciidotdev) \nIt uses [@trycua](https://x.com/trycua) for computer use\nIt also has plugin\n\nGrok Bot Introducing Grok Bot, now in early beta. Bots are AI teammates that do real work for you. They sign in to your tools, use them just like you do, and come back with finished work.\n\n🎉 Introducing OpenMausBot An open-source, self-hostable team of AI agents, not another boxed-in assistant. • Computer use: browser, terminal, files & a real desktop • Connectors for the apps you already live in • Goals, routines & progress that keep moving • Built for\n\nAtai Barkai 🎉 Introducing 𝙾𝚙𝚎𝚗𝙼𝚞𝚜𝚎 An open source, self-hostable personal assistant that works with any agent harness. Includes: - Computer use: browser, terminal & files - Connectors for your personal apps - Ideas, goals & progress tracking - Built for Mobile and Web Repo →\n\nMake your own Grok bot style mascot for free. It has 20+ expressions and animations that show different states of the bot. -> upload svg of your choice -> adjust the eyes -> check all the states ->download the code -> send to claude, codex or any other agent I used this\n\nBenji Taylor Had a lot of fun animating our new Grok Bot icon. It's entirely made in code, with every state, shape and expression able to morph smoothly into the other. And of course, I made it with Grok Build.\n\nI put my bots on a calendar I hate the routines UI that every harness app has right now For me it only makes sense to put the routines on a calendar So I did just that in OpenMaus The open source version of Grok Bot now has routines\n\nWe now have webhook support.\nThat means OpenMausBot can now react when something happens in the outside world\nThis was a suggestion from [@Arturkre](https://x.com/Arturkre), and honestly, it makes a lot of sense.\nYou want OpenMaus to work with your other agents and apps.\nFor example, connect your\n\nMilind S I put my bots on a calendar I hate the routines UI that every harness app has right now For me it only makes sense to put the routines on a calendar So I did just that in OpenMaus The open source version of Grok Bot now has routines\n\nThe open-source version of grok bot now has iOS app. Launching it soon. You can use your agents from your phone. thanks to the community for the contribution. Try OpenMausbot... free forever.\n\nopen source version of Grok bot is here. \nOpenMausBot has a new mascot now, with different personalities. \nthanks to [@_smontlouis](https://x.com/_smontlouis) for the inspiration.\nlink to the repo in the comments.\n\nopen sourced version of the Grok bot will now support the iOS Dynamic Island. Still tinkering around and open to ideas do feel free to contribute to the OpenMausBot repo. Let me know if you would love this? Launching soon....\n\nGrok Bot cannot use your android phone But OpenMausBot now can You can now connect your android via a USB and ask your it to open apps, tap, type, swipe, scroll, and get things done on your actual phone. It uses the phone harness skill for android and works really well Open\n\nso your bot just did something useful. Why should it ever forget how?\nI built a skill recorder in OpenMausBot based on the pstack article by [@poteto](https://x.com/poteto)\nIt watches while you chat, collects every command that it runs\nand converts it all into a skill with a click of a button\nNow\n\nlauren I'm writing a guide to pstack! Here's part one.\n\nngl the iOS Dynamic Island looks quite good. still refining it. launching the app soon for OpenMausBot.\n\nyou can already self-host [@mausbot_](https://x.com/mausbot_) \nWe’ve worked hard to make the developer experience great.\nbut you shouldn’t need to be so technical to get started.\nwe are launching one-click cloud deployment. We handle the hosting and server setup, with priority support whenever you need\n\nme with my open-source project up against billion dollar companies\n\nThe open-source version of Grok Bot is now available on Windows. Here is the installation guide.\n\nMilind S You can use open source version of Grok Bot on windows now!! OpenMausBot out on windows Linux is next\n\n[@mausbot_](https://x.com/mausbot_) 's UI is simpler now.\nWant the full picture of what your agents are doing? \nTurn on Advanced mode in Settings", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/openmausbot-open-source-grok-bot-alternative-with-a-virtual-machine", "canonical_source": "https://mausbot.com", "published_at": "2026-10-30 13:23:02+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-30 13:47:22.955111+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-agents", "ai-tools", "developer-tools", "artificial-intelligence", "ai-products"], "entities": ["OpenMausBot", "Grok Bot", "Claude Code", "Codex", "Composio", "Gmail", "Slack", "GitHub"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/openmausbot-open-source-grok-bot-alternative-with-a-virtual-machine", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/openmausbot-open-source-grok-bot-alternative-with-a-virtual-machine.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/openmausbot-open-source-grok-bot-alternative-with-a-virtual-machine.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/openmausbot-open-source-grok-bot-alternative-with-a-virtual-machine.jsonld"}}