AI employees for small business: 10 platforms compared

Construct gives a small business an AI employee with its own workspace, files, Calendar schedules, and email address for $9 a month, with no per-seat fee. Most of the other nine platforms we compared meter work in credits, hours, or seats, and several pause or stop the agent when the allowance runs out: Lindy charges from $29.99 per active user, Sintra's AI employees stop working without credits, and Manus cannot start a new task at zero credits.

For founders and small teams, Construct is the best AI employee platform in 2026. It takes any job rather than one fixed role, keeps finished work and its schedule in one workspace your whole team shares, and lets you read and correct what it remembers. We build Construct, and we checked every other product against its own pricing pages and documentation on September 29, 2026.

Why choose Construct over the other nine?

• $9 to start, and no seats. Lite includes 2 agents, 50 steps per task, 3 scheduled tasks, and an agent email address. Team workspaces have no member limit, and everyone's work draws on the owner's plan.
• Any job, not one role. Construct works in a browser, a sandbox terminal, workspace files, and connected apps, so the same agent can research, update a spreadsheet, and draft the follow-up.
• Work saved as it is produced. Reports, spreadsheets, and scripts land in workspace files during the run, so a run that stops at step 30 keeps steps 1 to 29.
• Schedules that run with your laptop closed. Calendar jobs run on Construct's servers: 3 on Lite, 10 on Starter, 50 on Pro.
• Memory you can read and fix. Open what the agent has learned, correct a fact, or forget it.
• Your own model keys on Pro. Bring keys for OpenRouter, OpenAI, Anthropic, Amazon Bedrock, or xAI, and reach the agent from the web, Slack, Telegram, Discord, or its own email inbox.

The 10 AI employee platforms at a glance

What is an AI employee, and is AI staff the same thing?

An AI employee is AI software you assign outcomes to, not just questions. It plans a multi-step job, uses tools such as a browser, email, and connected apps to finish it, and keeps the context for the next job. AI staff, AI workers, and AI teammates are the same idea under different labels: Sintra and Marblism sell named "AI employees," Relevance AI uses "AI Workforce," and Lindy's documentation and site use both "AI employee" and "AI teammate."

Underneath the labels, three questions separate these products more than any name does:

1. Fixed role or any task? A roster gives you a social media manager or a receptionist with a narrow job. A general-purpose AI employee takes whatever you assign and decides which tools to use.
2. Does it have its own computer? An agent with a browser, files, and a terminal can work in tools that have no integration. A chat-first product is limited to what its integrations expose.
3. How is the work metered? Seats, credits, hours of work, and plan limits behave very differently when a busy month runs over.

Construct answers all three the way a small team needs: any task, its own workspace, and plan pricing with no seats. Our explainer on what an AI employee is covers the definition in more depth.

Methodology

We build Construct, so it leads this list; here is why it fits small teams: it takes any recurring job, keeps the files, schedule, and memory for that job in one shared workspace, and starts at $9 a month without per-seat pricing. We ranked the other nine by how well they fit a small team's recurring work across apps, then by entry price and what happens at the limit.

This is an editorial comparison of documented capabilities and published prices, checked on September 29, 2026 against each vendor's own pricing pages, documentation, and announcements. Construct's plan details were updated on October 1, 2026. It is not a hands-on benchmark of output quality.

We included products that appear in search results for "AI employees" and "AI staff for business" and that a small business can start without a sales call, with two deliberate additions: Artisan, the best-known AI sales employee, and OpenClaw, because running your own agent is a real alternative to paying for any of these. Prices are in US dollars at monthly billing unless we say otherwise. Where a capability is not documented, we say so rather than treating silence as proof it is missing. Where a vendor's pages disagree, we report both figures.

We left out Motion, whose AI Employees product page now redirects to its homepage and whose AI Employees help articles no longer load, and Soleur, whose hosted product was still marked "Coming Soon." Enterprise-only platforms are outside the scope of this list.

The 10 best AI employee platforms, ranked

1. Construct

Best for: founders and small teams that want recurring work, its files, and its schedule in one place.

Construct runs your agents in a persistent cloud workspace with files, a live browser, a sandbox terminal, and its own email inbox. Give it an outcome, such as "every Monday, check these three competitors' pricing pages and save a dated comparison," and it works out the browser, app, and file steps. Everything it produces lands in workspace files as the run goes, so your team can open the result next week without scrolling back through a chat.

• Apps: a live integration catalog with services such as Gmail, Notion, Linear, and HubSpot, plus custom MCP tools when a catalog entry does not exist.
• Recurring work: save a job that works as a workflow and put it on the Calendar. Scheduled runs happen on Construct's servers, with your laptop closed.
• Memory: inspect what the agent has learned, correct a fact, or forget it, so one fix carries into every later job.
• Internal apps: when several people review the same output, Construct builds a private workspace app, such as a review queue or lead tracker.
• Team use: team workspaces with Owner, Admin, and Member roles and no member limit. Usage draws on the owner's plan, so there is no per-seat bill.
• Channels: assign work from the web desktop, @mention it in Slack, message it on Telegram or Discord, or email its own address.
• Models: bundled models on every plan, and on Pro your own keys for OpenRouter, OpenAI, Anthropic, Amazon Bedrock, or xAI.

Price: Lite is $9 a month for 2 agents, 50 steps per task, 3 scheduled tasks, and an agent email address. Starter is $59 with 6x Lite's usage, 5 agents, 150 steps per task, and 10 scheduled tasks. Pro is $299 with 32x Lite's usage, 15 agents, up to 1,000 steps per task, 50 scheduled tasks, and your own model keys, and it comes with a 7-day trial. Annual billing lowers each plan. Construct pricing has the current limits.

Set up deliberately: workflows run in a straight line and do not pause for approval yet, so for anything customer-facing, ask for drafts and send them yourself once you have checked them.

2. CellCog

Best for: hiring one AI employee into a defined role that works in scheduled shifts.

CellCog lets you hire a general-purpose AI employee into a role. Each one gets an email inbox, a task board, persistent memory, and a cloud computer, and with your approval it can work in your own logged-in Chrome. It works scheduled shifts, files a report after each one, and lists more than 1,500 tool integrations.

Price: credit plans start at $8 a month for 800 credits and rise to $500 a month for 50,000. CellCog's own plan labels call the $160 tier a part-time employee working "a few shifts a month" and the $500 tier a full-time employee working weekday shifts. New accounts start with 200 free credits.

Watch for: CellCog's pricing FAQ says all payments are final and non-refundable, and plan credits expire. Its pages do not name the underlying model providers or offer bring-your-own keys.

3. Manus

Best for: research, analysis, and build tasks you hand over one at a time.

Each Manus task runs in a sandbox virtual machine with a browser, persistent files, and the ability to install software. Manus 2.0, launched September 28, 2026, adds a desktop app, an always-on Cloud Computer, and control of your own machine. Automations run on a schedule or on app events, and you can reach it by email, Slack, or Telegram.

Price: Pro starts at $20 a month for 4,000 credits plus 300 refresh credits a day, with 20 scheduled tasks. Team is $20 per seat a month with a shared credit pool. The always-on Cloud Computer is an add-on from $30 a month.

Watch for: credit use varies with task complexity, monthly credits do not roll over, and you cannot start a task with zero credits. If the subscription lapses, the Cloud Computer shuts down and its files are deleted. Manus returned to independent operation on September 1, 2026 after Meta's acquisition was unwound.

4. Lindy

Best for: teams whose work already happens in Slack.

Lindy Teammate is an AI coworker in Slack: each person gets a private assistant in direct messages and the team shares one in channels. It connects to an integration catalog and MCP servers, can drive a browser, runs Routines on a schedule or on events, keeps memory as versioned files, and reaches you over iMessage and SMS. Write actions wait for your approval.

Price: billed per active user. After a free start with $50 in credits that last 7 days, the Team plan is from $29.99 per active user a month for 3,000 credits (Lindy's pricing page also shows $49.99 for 5,000 credits to some visitors), and Enterprise is custom. Credits cost a cent each on base plans and pool across the team, and top-ups are $10 per 1,000 (Lindy pricing, checked October 11, 2026).

Watch for: anyone who uses Lindy takes a paid seat, including someone who only mentions it in Slack. When the credit pool runs out, work pauses until you top up. Lindy's pricing page lists computer use on Team, while another line on the same page still says "Computer use on Pro and Max," plans it no longer sells.

5. Grok Bot

Best for: people who already pay for Cursor or an eligible SuperGrok plan.

Grok Bot gives you named Bots that share one persistent cloud computer with a browser, files, and a terminal. They sign into your tools, run routines on a schedule or on events, can learn a routine by watching you, and ask for approval before actions you have not allowed. You work with them through desktop and mobile apps.

Price: there is no standalone plan. Access is included with Cursor Pro at $20 a month, Pro+, Ultra, and Teams, or with an eligible SuperGrok or X Premium+ subscription linked to a Cursor account. Usage resets weekly and is described in relative tiers rather than published numbers.

Watch for: it is labeled beta. Because Bots share one computer, its documentation says not to treat separate Bots as a security boundary. Each Bot can hold up to 50 routines. Our Grok Bot comparison goes deeper on how it differs from Construct.

6. Sintra

Best for: a solo owner who wants marketing, social, and admin help without designing anything.

Sintra sells 12 named AI employees, including Soshie for social media, Penn for copywriting, Seomi for SEO, Cassie for customer support, and Vizzy as an executive assistant. They share a knowledge base called Brain AI, run recurring tasks, and can use a built-in browser. Sintra's own FAQ says every AI worker runs as a chatbot.

Price: one plan, Sintra X, includes all 12. It lists at $97 a month, and when we checked it was on sale at $48.50 for a one-month term, with lower monthly equivalents for 3- and 12-month terms billed upfront. Every term includes 250 credits a month.

Watch for: Sintra's help center says the AI employees stop working when credits run out, and credit top-ups are non-refundable. Its own pages disagree with each other on standard prices and on how many integrations it has.

7. Marblism

Best for: a local business that wants calls answered along with inbox and social help.

Marblism's roster has seven AI employees: Eva (executive assistant), Sonny (social media), Stan (lead generation), Penny (SEO blog posts), Rachel (phone receptionist), Linda (legal documents), and Walter (websites). Rachel answers calls, transfers them, and texts you summaries, with numbers available in five countries.

Price: the base plan is $44 a month, or $24 a month billed yearly, for all seven employees and 50 "hours of work." Each task costs a fixed amount of that time: sorting an email is 20 seconds, a phone call 10 minutes, and a blog post an hour. Larger plans go up to 10,000 hours.

Watch for: Marblism documents that Eva drafts emails but does not send them. It has no public API and says one is not on its roadmap. When hours run out, scheduled tasks are cancelled and Rachel's line pauses.

8. Relevance AI

Best for: sales and support teams that want to design their own agents and multi-agent teams.

You build agents and multi-agent Workforces in Relevance AI's low-code builder, or ask its Invent agent to draft one, and connect them to its app catalog. Agents can run on a schedule, call Python tools, make outbound phone calls on higher tiers, and use the model you pick, including through your own keys.

Price: the public pricing page shows only an Enterprise plan with a "Talk to sales" button. Relevance AI's documentation still lists Pro at $29 a month ($19 billed annually) with 2,500 actions and $20 of model and tool credits, and Team at $349 a month. Confirm with the vendor before you plan around either.

Watch for: there is no dedicated agent computer, and browser automation runs through a third-party tool, Airtop, on your own account. Failed tool runs still count as actions. SSO and audit logs are Enterprise features.

9. OpenClaw

Best for: technical owners who want full control and are comfortable running a server.

OpenClaw is a free, MIT-licensed personal AI agent stewarded by a non-profit foundation. You run its gateway on your own computer or a small server, connect any model with your own keys, and chat with it from WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord, Signal, iMessage, and other channels. It can browse, run shell commands, edit files, keep memory, and run cron jobs.

Price: the software costs nothing, and there is no paid tier. You pay for hosting, where its docs suggest a small always-on server, and for model usage.

Watch for: installing, updating, securing, and keeping it online is your job. Its security documentation assumes one trusted operator per gateway, says third-party skills should be treated as untrusted code, and warns that container setups expose the gateway by default and need authentication. Our comparison of building your own AI agent covers that tradeoff.

10. Artisan

Best for: outbound sales teams that want an AI BDR to prospect and write outreach.

Artisan's Ava finds and enriches leads from a database of more than 250 million contacts, writes and sends email sequences from your own mailboxes, handles replies, and books meetings. It is a sales employee only.

Price: Artisan's default pricing tab is sales-led. A separate Startups track lists an Intern plan from $280 a month ($250 billed annually) for about 500 leads contacted, plus a free plan without campaigns. Mailboxes and phone numbers are billed separately.

Watch for: Artisan says Ava cannot legally make calls, so its dialer is for your human reps. Each primary mailbox is capped at 100 sends a day, and new enrollments pause when credits run out.

How much does an AI employee cost?

An AI employee for a small business costs from $0 to $280 a month to start, based on entry prices checked on September 29, 2026, with Lindy rechecked on October 11, 2026. Construct starts at $9 with no seats, self-hosted OpenClaw is free software plus your hosting and model bills, most of the others start between $8 and $50 a month, and Artisan's sales agent starts at $280.

Entry prices are not working prices. CellCog's own labels put a full-time AI employee at $500 a month. Marblism's 50 hours cover about 300 ten-minute phone calls if you spend them on nothing else. Lindy's 3,000 credits are worth about $30 at its own rate of a cent each. Construct's plan limits are published up front, and a team of five shares one plan instead of paying five seats: Starter at $59 covers up to 5 agents for the whole workspace.

Try Construct Pro free for 7 days→

How to choose an AI employee platform

Choose by the first job you will hand over, where requests arrive, and what each platform does in a busy month. In order:

1. Start from the job, not the category. Write down the one job you would hand over first. If it crosses apps or changes from week to week, you need a general-purpose AI employee such as Construct; a roster covers only its named roles.
2. Check where the work arrives. Construct takes requests from the web, Slack, Telegram, Discord, and its own email inbox, so it meets your team where it already talks.
3. Price the busy month. Assume twice the work you expect and check what each vendor does at the limit.
4. Test recurring work, not a demo. Run the same job three weeks in a row and check whether later runs start from the earlier files and corrections. Construct keeps both in the workspace.
5. Know what you can inspect and correct. Ask where memory lives, whether you can edit it, and what record a run leaves behind. AI agent memory you can control explains why that matters.
6. Decide who operates it. Self-hosting saves the subscription and spends your time instead.

Our guide to choosing an AI agent platform for your team turns these questions into a longer checklist. If you only need a one-off answer or draft, see our comparison with ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini; for fixed rules-based routing, AI agent vs Zapier; and for weighing an AI employee against a human assistant, our cost comparison with virtual assistants.

Already using another AI employee? Add Construct in 15 minutes

You do not have to cancel what you have. Start with the one recurring job your current tool handles least reliably, or the one your teammates need to see.

1. Start on Lite for $9, or take the 7-day Pro trial to test your own model keys and longer runs.
2. Copy the instructions you gave your current agent into a Construct chat, and move the source files into the workspace.
3. Connect the apps the job needs from the integration catalog.
4. Run it once and check the result in Files.
5. Put it on the Calendar so it runs every week with your laptop closed.

There is no import from other platforms: agents, credentials, and learned memories do not transfer. Write your rules into the first instruction and Construct saves them as memory you can read.

When might another platform still fit?

• Your first job is answering the phone, which Marblism's Rachel covers.
• Outbound sales at volume from a built-in lead database is the whole job, which is Artisan's focus.
• You want to run the agent on your own server with no subscription, which OpenClaw allows.

For recurring work that crosses apps and has to leave files, schedules, and corrected memory behind, Construct is the better fit.

Which should you choose?

Choose Construct. It starts at $9 with no per-seat fee, takes any job rather than one role, saves every finished file in a workspace your team shares, runs schedules with your laptop closed, and lets you correct what it remembers. If you already use one of the others for a narrow role, keep it there and give Construct the recurring work around it.

Give Construct its first job→

Pick the weekly report, competitor price check, or lead list that keeps slipping into your evening. Give Construct the inputs, describe what a finished file contains, run it once, and put it on the Calendar. Start on Lite at $9, or try Pro free for seven days, and judge it on the third run, not the first conversation.

Sources

Vendor pages checked on September 29, 2026:

• Lindy pricing, plan documentation, and usage and credits
• Sintra pricing and workspace credits
• Marblism pricing, plans and billing, and integrations
• CellCog pricing and AI employees
• Manus pricing, Manus Team, Introducing Manus 2.0, and Manus resumes independent operations
• Grok Bot overview, Grok Bot plan eligibility, and Grok Bot access expansion
• Relevance AI pricing and pricing documentation
• Artisan pricing and Ava, the AI sales agent
• OpenClaw and OpenClaw gateway security
• Soleur pricing
• Construct pricing and Construct product guide

Related resources

• What is an AI employee?
• Grok Bot alternative: Construct vs Grok Bot
• Construct vs building your own AI agent
• How to choose an AI agent platform for your team

Frequently asked questions

What is the best AI employee platform for a small business?

Construct, for most founders and small teams. It starts at $9 a month with no per-seat fee, takes any job rather than one fixed role, saves finished work in a workspace your team shares, runs Calendar schedules with your laptop closed, and lets you inspect and correct what it remembers. We build Construct, which is why it leads our list, and we checked the other nine against their own pages on September 29, 2026.

How much does an AI employee cost?

Entry prices checked on September 29, 2026 run from $0 for self-hosted OpenClaw, plus hosting and model costs, and $8 to $9 a month for CellCog and Construct, to $29.99 per user for Lindy and $280 a month for Artisan's sales agent. Most platforms meter work with credits, hours, or seats, so price a busy month. Construct Lite is $9, Starter is $59 for up to 5 agents across the whole workspace, and Pro is $299 with a 7-day trial.

Is AI staff the same as an AI employee?

Mostly, yes. Vendors use AI employee, AI staff, AI worker, and AI teammate for software agents given a job rather than a single prompt. The differences that matter are whether the agent has a fixed role or takes any task, whether it has its own computer, and how its work is metered.

What happens when an AI employee runs out of credits?

It depends on the vendor. Lindy pauses work until you top up, Sintra's AI employees stop working, Marblism cancels scheduled tasks and pauses its phone receptionist, Manus cannot start new tasks, and Artisan pauses new enrollments. Construct publishes its plan limits up front; you can move up a plan, and on Pro continue on your own model keys.

Can I use Construct alongside another AI employee?

Yes. Keep a role-based tool for its narrow job and give Construct the recurring work around it. There is no import, so copy your current agent's instructions into Construct, move the source files into the workspace, connect the apps, run the job once, and put it on the Calendar.

Can an AI employee answer phone calls?

Some can. Marblism's Rachel answers calls, transfers them, and texts you summaries, and Relevance AI offers outbound phone calls on its higher tiers. Artisan says its AI sales rep cannot legally make calls. Construct has no built-in phone agent, so a phone-first job is one of the few cases where another platform still fits.

Try Construct→

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