Every fact in the table below is taken from the vendor's own published pages on September 1, 2026, and linked next to the claim. Where a vendor does not publish something, the cell reads "Not stated". It is never scored as absent.
Model quality, speed and taste are hard to compare fairly and change every few weeks. These four properties are structural. They are either published or they are not, and they decide whether work survives the moment you stop watching it.
Entry price is the cheapest paid tier a vendor lists publicly, not the tier that matches Second Machine feature for feature. Usage unit is the thing that gets counted down as work happens.
| Product | Entry price | Usage unit | Dedicated machine | Standing orders | Per-job cost shown |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Second Machine | $29.95 / mo | Credits, stated per plan | Yes, one container per customer | Yes, 1 / 5 / 20 | In your monthly statement |
| ChatGPTopenai.com/chatgpt/pricing · scheduled tasks help | $20 Plus · $200 Pro | Message tiers | Not stated | Yes, hourly at most; 5 tasks on Plus | No |
| Claude (Pro / Max)claude.com/pricing · Claude Code on the web | $17 annual · $100–$200 Max | Rolling 5-hour limits | Per-session VM, reclaimed when idle | Yes (Routines) | No |
| Perplexity Computerperplexity.ai/hub/pricing · credits help | $20 · $200 | Credits, 100 = $1 | Isolated per task, not dedicated | Yes, hourly floor, 15 per thread | Ranges per task type |
| Manushelp.manus.im | $20 · $40 | Credits | Not stated | Yes, 20 on Pro | Credit history per task |
| Genspark Clawgenspark.ai helpcenter | Not stated | Credits | Yes, dedicated cloud computer | Yes | No |
| Maritimemaritime.sh/pricing · how it works | $20 for 20 agents | Agents; nothing metered | Yes, micro-VM per agent | Yes, cron | No, deliberately flat |
| Hosted OpenClaw (ClawCloud)clawcloud.sh/pricing | $29 · $49 · $109 | Server specs; BYO keys | Yes, one instance per server | Not stated | No |
| Hostinger Managed OpenClawhostinger.com/managed-openclaw | $5.99 intro → $11.99 | Compute; credits included | Yes, isolated instance | Queues on schedule | No |
Prices and features change. Tell us if a row is out of date and we will fix it and say when we did.
Green is a published yes. Amber is a partial: the property exists but with a limit, or the figure is a range rather than a settled amount. Grey is either a published no or a cell the vendor does not address.
A $20 message tier and a $29.95 machine plan buy different things. The table lists the entry price so the shape of each offer is visible, not so the cheapest number wins.
Model quality, answer accuracy, app integrations and support response times are all absent, because none of them can be sourced to a single vendor page and checked by a reader.
A comparison table that flatters the product publishing it is worth nothing. Here are the places where a reader should pick something else, stated as plainly as the table above.
Maritime lists $20 for twenty agents with nothing metered, which works out to a dollar per agent per month against $29.95 for one machine here. For anyone who wants many small always-on agents and does not care what each run cost, that is the better deal.
Metering is only an advantage if a reader wants to see the cost. A flat rate with no ceiling to hit and no top-up to configure is simpler, and Maritime chose that deliberately rather than by omission.
Both ship frontier models, mobile and desktop apps, voice, image generation, connectors to dozens of third-party tools, and an extension ecosystem. Second Machine runs open-weight models through a metered gateway and a small set of runtimes. On raw model capability and breadth of integrations, it is not close.
Support hours, compliance paperwork, uptime history and regional data residency are all areas where a large vendor is ahead. Anyone whose procurement process asks for those should ask for them before choosing on price or receipts.
Second Machine is the better choice on exactly two axes: a container that is yours alone and stays yours, and a flat price where the only thing that changes between plans is how many credits you get. Everything else on this page is someone else's strength.
Every competitor cell on this page comes from the vendor's own published page, linked inline next to the claim rather than collected in a footnote. Nothing here is taken from a review site, a press summary, or another comparison table. The whole page was checked against those pages on 2026-09-01, and that date is printed in the footer of every page on this site.
If a cell on this page is wrong, that is a defect in the product, not a marketing detail. Report it the same way a bug would be reported.
Answer one question about what you do. Your machine starts on it before you finish reading the confirmation, and proposes tomorrow morning's standing order. Plans from $29 a month.