9 Best ChatGPT Dots Alternatives in 2026
OpenAI launched dots at DevDay on September 29, 2026: always-on agents in ChatGPT, each with its own cloud computer, that work on your goals in the background and message you when they need a decision. Axios called it OpenAI’s answer to Meta’s Muse.
The catch is the door. Dots sit behind ChatGPT Pro from $100/month or Business Premium, Pro users in the UK, Switzerland and the EEA are excluded at launch, and a dot can’t have its own email address yet.
The quick answer: Carly is the best ChatGPT dots alternative for work. You get AI agents that each have their own email address you can cc, workflows that start the moment a booking, form, email or CRM change lands, and a connection to thousands of apps. No $100 plan in front of it: free Zapier-style workflows; AI agents from $35/month. Set up your first agent here. If you want a consumer errand agent instead, Meta Muse is the closest match.
Quick comparison
| Tool | Built for | Sends email as | Talk to it by | Access | Entry price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carly | Agents that run work email, calendar and business apps | Each agent’s own address, or your accounts | Web, SMS, email, ChatGPT, Claude | Sign up online | Free workflows; agents from $35/mo |
| Meta Muse | Errands, plus small-business apps | Your account | App, web, WhatsApp, Mac | US and Canada, adults | Free; Power $20/mo |
| Claude | Handed-off and scheduled tasks | Your connected accounts | Web, desktop, mobile | Open signup, UK and EU included | Pro $20/mo |
| Grok Bot | Several named bots on a cloud computer | Your account or the bot’s | Desktop and mobile apps, Slack | Paid Cursor or SuperGrok plans | Cursor Pro $20/mo |
| Gemini Spark | Ongoing tasks across Google apps | Your account | Gemini web, mobile and Mac apps | Personal Google accounts only | Google AI Pro $19.99/mo |
| Lindy | A Slack teammate for inbox and meetings | Up to 5 connected inboxes | Slack, iMessage | Open signup | $29.99/user/mo |
| Instinct | Personal life, by text and phone | Agent email rolling out | Text, iMessage, WhatsApp, calls | Invite or waitlist | No published price |
| Poke | A text-message assistant | Your email or a Poke address | iMessage, SMS, WhatsApp, Telegram | Open signup | Free; Pro $19/mo |
| OpenClaw | A self-hosted agent you operate | Your account or a bot account | WhatsApp, Slack, Telegram, with setup | Public download | Free software, plus model costs |
| ChatGPT dots (for reference) | One always-on agent in ChatGPT | Not its own address at launch | ChatGPT, Slack, Teams, US texting beta | Pro outside UK/EEA/CH, Business Premium | Pro from $100/mo |
Why people look for a dots alternative
- The price floor. Dots are not on ChatGPT Free, Go or Plus. Pro starts at $100/month and is billed monthly only, with no annual option. As one Hacker News commenter put it, “Free, Go, and Plus are probably the most popular consumer-facing plans, and Dots isn’t available on any of those.”
- Region. OpenAI’s help center says dots are rolling out to Pro users “in markets excluding the European Economic Area, Switzerland, and the UK.” Business Premium gets them in all supported regions, so in Europe the only way in is a business plan.
- No email address of its own. You can connect your personal email, but “at launch, you cannot give your dot its own standalone email address.” Email it sends goes out from your own account.
- Texting is a narrow beta. Texting runs through a third-party provider, is limited to Pro users in the US, isn’t available in Business or Enterprise workspaces, and may not reach every Pro user. A dot also can’t call you at launch.
- Desktop to set up. You create a dot in the ChatGPT desktop app or desktop browser. You can’t create one on mobile, and mobile web isn’t supported.
- Usage terms aren’t published. Dots usage doesn’t count against plan allowances for the first month, and OpenAI says it will share usage terms after that. Tasks a dot starts in Codex or ChatGPT Work already count.
- Pro 200 just got cut. From October 30, included ChatGPT Work and Codex usage on the $200 plan falls from 20 times to 10 times the Plus allowance, alongside a new $500 tier. Heavy users are shopping around.
- One dot, and what it reads stays. You start with one dot. It reviews connected apps in the background and forms memories from them, and disconnecting an app does not delete what it already learned. To clear that, you reset the whole dot.
The full rundown of what dots do is in our ChatGPT dots guide.
1. Carly
Carly is built around the part dots leave out at launch: agents with an identity of their own that live in your work email.
Here is how that plays out. A lead fills in the form on Michael’s site at 11pm. His sales agent replies from its own address, offers times from his calendar, books the call and logs it in HubSpot. Nobody opened a chat. The next morning Claire ccs her operations agent on a supplier thread. That agent is set to draft only, so the reply waits for her approval.
What you get:
- Agents with their own email address. Each Carly agent gets an address you can cc or forward to, and on a business account its own phone number. A dot can’t have its own address at launch.
- Send, or draft for approval, per agent. Let the scheduling agent send on its own and keep the finance agent on drafts. You decide agent by agent.
- Only the tools you hand it. Each agent reaches just the apps you give it, plus its own knowledge base and skills, so the support agent never touches payroll.
- Workflows that start on their own. Carly workflows start on their own when something happens: an email comes in, a meeting gets booked, a lead changes stage in your CRM, a row lands in a spreadsheet. Carly can also keep an eye on any app with an API.
- Thousands of apps. Carly connects to thousands of apps, from Gmail and Outlook to Salesforce and Slack.
- Web and SMS. Use it in any browser or text it from your phone. No desktop app required to set it up.
- Inside ChatGPT and Claude too. Add the Carly plugin in ChatGPT or the Carly connector in Claude, and those chats can send email, book meetings and update records through Carly.
- Scheduling included. Booking pages come with it.
Best for: professionals and small teams who want agents working their inbox, calendar and business apps without a $100 plan in front of them
Pricing: Free Zapier-style workflows; AI agents from $35/month
Limitations: A managed Google Workspace or Microsoft tenant may need administrator approval before agents can connect. Want it set up around your stack? Book a call with the team.
2. Meta Muse
The agent dots were launched to answer. Muse opens a browser, fills in forms, sends email and pays with a one-time card inside your own accounts, and it checks with you before sending an email or making a purchase.
Meta offers Muse to adults in the US and Canada, working from a single person's own accounts. Its September 29 small-business update brought Slack, QuickBooks, HighLevel, Shopify, Stripe and more, so the connector list is no longer only errands. Email is where it stays narrow: one Gmail account, one Outlook account, and no shared mailbox or helpdesk named. Carly works across all of your mailboxes at once and connects to thousands of apps.
Best for: personal errands in the US or Canada at no cost
Pricing: Free with usage limits; Power $20/mo; Maximum $100/mo
Limitations: US and Canada only, training on your interactions is on by default, and sites like Amazon block it. See our Muse guide and Meta Muse alternatives.
3. Claude
Anthropic’s answer for handing off work. Claude Pro includes handing off and scheduling tasks, and Anthropic is folding Cowork into Claude itself on Pro and Max. It connects to a large connectors directory, and Claude is sold in the UK, Switzerland and the EU.
Best for: Europeans who want a big-lab agent today, and anyone who wants deep work done across documents and connected apps
Pricing: Pro $20/mo billed monthly ($17/mo billed annually); Max from $100/mo
Limitations: Pro usage is capped, and heavy agent work pushes you toward Max. Compare the field in Claude Cowork alternatives.
4. Grok Bot
Where dots give you one agent to start, Grok Bot gives you several named bots on a shared cloud computer, with routines, plugins and optional local commands. The desktop app now runs on macOS, Windows and Linux. Details in our Grok Bot guide.
Best for: technical users who want several agents driving a real computer
Pricing: Included from Cursor Pro at $20/mo, and with SuperGrok subscriptions
Limitations: Every bot on an account shares one computer, so a login made for one is available to all. Heavy users report burning the weekly allowance in a day or two.
5. Gemini Spark
Google’s always-on agent runs ongoing tasks across Google’s apps, on a schedule or a trigger. More in what Gemini Spark is.
Best for: people whose personal life runs on Google
Pricing: Google AI Pro at $19.99/mo
Limitations: It refuses work and school Google accounts, and it isn’t available in the EEA, Switzerland, the UK or Nigeria, so it doesn’t solve the Europe problem either. See Gemini Spark alternatives.
6. Lindy
Lindy now sells itself as a Slack-native teammate: it takes mentions in threads, manages your inbox across up to five accounts, drafts replies in your voice, handles meeting prep and follow-up, and you can reach it over iMessage. Approvals are built in.
Best for: teams that live in Slack and want one shared assistant
Pricing: $29.99/mo per user with 3,000 credits; Pro $99.99/mo per user
Limitations: Everything runs on credits, and deep work costs 250 to 1,000 credits a task, so a busy month climbs fast. See Carly vs Lindy and Lindy alternatives.
7. Instinct
The consumer agent most people compare dots with after Muse. You text it or call it, it can call you, and agent email is rolling out, which is exactly what dots lack at launch. It raised at a $10B valuation on September 28.
Best for: early adopters who want a personal agent by text and can get an invite
Pricing: Free in private beta, no published price
Limitations: Invite-only. A September 21 to 22 outage left users unsure which emails had gone out, and Resy banned an investor’s account after the agent hammered the site. See what Instinct is and Instinct alternatives.
8. Poke
A text-message assistant from The Interaction Company, now part of Cognition. Connect your email and calendar, then text it over iMessage, SMS, WhatsApp or Telegram. It fills the gap left by dots’ US-only texting beta.
Best for: a cheap assistant that messages you first
Pricing: Free; Pro $19/mo; Ultra $199/mo
Limitations: It’s one assistant in one message thread, and the Cognition deal may pull the roadmap toward developer tools. More in Poke alternatives.
9. OpenClaw
The open-source agent the whole category gets compared to. You choose the model, the machine and the channels, including WhatsApp, Slack and Telegram, and you can run several agents. Nothing is region-locked because you host it.
Best for: technical users who want full control, including outside dots’ launch markets
Pricing: Free software; you pay for the model and the machine
Limitations: You are the operator: credentials, patches, spending limits and approvals are all on you. See what OpenClaw is and OpenClaw alternatives.
Which dots alternative should you choose?
- You want agents with their own email address working your inbox, calendar and CRM: Carly
- You want a free consumer errand agent in the US or Canada: Meta Muse
- You’re in the UK or EU and want a big-lab agent now: Claude, or Carly for inbox and calendar agents
- You want several agents on a real computer: Grok Bot
- Your personal life runs on Google: Gemini Spark
- Your team lives in Slack and accepts credits: Lindy
- You want to text an agent and can get an invite: Instinct
- You want a cheap text assistant: Poke
- You want to host it yourself: OpenClaw
- You already pay for Pro and want the work side covered: keep your dot, and add the Carly plugin to your ChatGPT chats
FAQ
What is the best ChatGPT dots alternative? For work, Carly. Its agents each get their own email address, start on events in the apps you use, and connect to thousands of apps, with no $100 plan required. For a consumer errand agent, Meta Muse is the closest match.
How much do ChatGPT dots cost? Your first dot is included with ChatGPT Pro, which starts at $100/month billed monthly, or with Business Premium. Dots are not on Free, Go or Plus, and OpenAI hasn’t published usage terms for after the first month. Carly’s pricing is free Zapier-style workflows, with AI agents from $35/month.
Are ChatGPT dots available in the EU or UK? Not on Pro. OpenAI excludes Pro users in the European Economic Area, Switzerland and the UK at launch, though Business Premium gets dots in all supported regions. Meta Muse and Gemini Spark are also unavailable there. Claude is sold in the UK and EU, and OpenClaw runs anywhere you host it. For inbox and calendar agents, talk to the Carly team about your accounts.
ChatGPT dots vs Meta Muse: what’s the difference? Dots live inside ChatGPT on paid Pro and Business Premium plans, work from their own cloud computer, and take messages in ChatGPT, Slack and Teams. Muse has a free tier, runs in the US and Canada, and works in its own app, on the web and in WhatsApp. Both send from your own accounts rather than an address of their own. Our Muse guide has the detail.
Can a dot have its own email address? Not at launch. OpenAI says you can connect your personal email, but you can’t give a dot a standalone address. Every Carly agent gets its own address you can cc.
Can I text my dot? Only if you are a US Pro user in the limited texting beta, which runs through a third-party provider and isn’t offered in Business or Enterprise workspaces. Carly works over SMS as well as on the web.
Can I use Carly inside ChatGPT? Yes. Add the Carly plugin in ChatGPT and your chats can send email, book meetings and update records through Carly. Build your first workflow to see what it can run on its own.
More: ChatGPT dots explained · Meta Muse alternatives · Instinct alternatives · Meta Muse vs Instinct · Best AI personal assistants · Best AI agents for productivity
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