Short answer: they are both agents with a computer of their own, and they are aimed at different jobs. Grok Bot is a team of work Bots you design, schedule and share. Muse is Meta's personal agent, built to message like a person and take everyday tasks off your plate. If you also see dots in the same searches, that is OpenAI's agent, covered in the three-way comparison.
What each product is
xAI introduced Grok Bot on August 11, 2026 as a team of always-on agents. Each Bot has a job, a chat and routines, and they share a cloud computer. You start work by chatting, by a schedule, or by an event from Slack, GitHub, Linear, Sentry, PagerDuty, email or a webhook. Creators can publish a public x.ai/bot page that someone else adds as a copy. That is the layer GrokShelf lists.
Meta introduced Muse on September 8, 2026, and updated the announcement on September 30. Muse is a personal agent that messages you in the Muse app or in WhatsApp, runs on a dedicated virtual machine called Muse Secure VM, and uses Muse Spark. Meta's line is that you tell it what needs doing and it takes the action: email, travel, forms, longer goals. It keeps working after you close the app and comes back when something changes or when it needs a yes (Meta's announcement).
Grok Bot vs Muse, side by side
The rows are taken from each company's own pages, read on November 3, 2026. Neither page is a benchmark of which agent finishes a task better.
| Grok Bot (xAI) | Muse (Meta) | |
|---|---|---|
| Announced | August 11, 2026 | September 8, 2026 |
| Built for | Work: several Bots, each with one job, including teams | Personal life: tasks, projects and longer goals |
| Its own computer | A cloud computer your Bots share | Muse Secure VM, one dedicated machine per person, with its own browser |
| Model | Not named as a single fixed model on the launch page | Muse Spark |
| Where you talk to it | Desktop app, iOS, Android, Slack | Muse app, WhatsApp; web at muse.ai |
| What starts work | Chat, schedules and events you connect | What you ask, plus goals it keeps advancing, and suggestions from memory |
| Before it sends or pays | You set approvals; xAI recommends a check before sending, buying, deleting or publishing | It asks before sending email or paying, and shows an audit trail |
| Payments | You approve purchases; Shop Pay can be connected in the Vault | Link by Stripe, with a one-time card; Shop Pay and 1Password support were described as coming |
| Sharing a setup | Public x.ai/bot templates and Team Bots | Personal; the announcement does not describe a public template directory |
| Price | Included with Premium, Super and Ultra on The X Subscription. See current prices. | Free for most of what people need, with subscription plans for heavier use. Meta did not list those plan prices in the announcement |
| Where it is available | Desktop on Mac, Windows and Linux, plus iPhone and Android, on an eligible plan | Rolling out in the US on iOS, Android and muse.ai; glasses called out as coming |
The differences that decide it
One agent or a team of them. Muse is one personal agent with a main chat and, in Meta's design notes, side chats when a project needs its own thread. Grok Bot expects several Bots. A research Bot, an inbox Bot and a coding Bot do not share one conversation. That is also why a directory of shared Bots and templates exists for Grok Bot and not, in anything Meta has published, for Muse.
Work tools versus everyday life. Grok Bot's event triggers are Slack, GitHub, Linear and the rest of a work stack, and Cursor plans are one of the ways in. Muse's examples are the household and the personal inbox: a saved recipe turning into a grocery list, a bill, a trip, a dinner plan. It can reach work, but that is not the pitch.
Who watches the computer. Grok Bot lets you open the computer and take a step the agent cannot finish, such as a passkey. Muse puts a separate Sentinel on the same machine. Meta says nothing reaches the internet unless the Sentinel allows it, and Muse cannot see passwords or payment numbers, including passwords you type in its browser yourself.
How you pay for it. Grok Bot's price is a plan you can look up: Premium and above, with the amounts in how much Grok Bot costs. Muse's announcement says it is free for most of what people need, with paid plans if you want to do more, and does not publish those prices. Treat any specific Muse price you see elsewhere as unchecked until Meta lists it.
Where dots fit
Search interest also lumps in "dots" and "Grok Bot vs Muse vs dots." Dots are OpenAI's always-on agent inside ChatGPT, Slack and Teams, announced September 29, 2026. They are closer to Muse in being one personal agent, and closer to Grok Bot in living next to work chat. The full table, including Claude Duet, is in Grok Bot vs OpenAI dots vs Claude Duet.
A practical split from those pages: pick Grok Bot when the work is repeatable, shared with a team, or tied to GitHub, Linear or a schedule. Pick Muse when you want one agent for personal errands in an app that feels like a message thread, and you are in the US rollout. Pick dots when your day already runs through ChatGPT.
What this page does not claim
It does not say which agent is smarter. Meta and xAI have not published a shared benchmark, and early reviews, including Peter Yang's notes on Grok Bot, Muse and dots, are one person's use, not a test. It also does not cover Instinct or other agents that show up beside these queries unless their maker has a page we can cite the same way.
If you start with Grok Bot, add one public Bot for a single job and read Using a Grok Bot safely before you connect an inbox or a repository.
Before adding any of these, read Using a Grok Bot safely.
References
- Meta: Introducing Muse — September 8, 2026, updated September 30
- Meta: How we designed Muse
- xAI: Introducing Grok Bot — August 11, 2026
- xAI docs: Grok Bot overview
- xAI docs: Get started
- GrokShelf: Grok Bot vs dots vs Claude Duet