Locked out of Grok Bot's waitlist? You're in good company — and a proper Grok Bot free alternative dropped just one day after the beta went live. It's called OpenMausBot (you'll also see it written Open MouseBot), it's open source, and instead of asking for another subscription it runs on the AI tools you're already logged into. I got hands on with it the day it dropped, ran it side by side with Grok Bot, and for most people I think it's the smarter place to start.
📺 Watch: OpenMausBot DESTROYS Grok Bot?
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What Is OpenMausBot? The Grok Bot Free Alternative That Shipped in a Day
Quick timeline. Grok Bot went into early beta on 11 August behind a waitlist most people still can't get through. The very next day, a builder named Milind Soni shipped OpenMausBot: a free, open-source version of the whole idea.
The core trick is what makes it clever. Instead of selling you a new plan, OpenMausBot plugs into the AI tools you already pay for and are already signed into. Use Claude? It drives your Claude through Claude Code. On Codex? It uses your Codex. It even works with Grok's own tool. No new accounts, no extra plans, no API keys — it rides your existing CLI logins, not APIs.
That matters more than it sounds. You can't use your Claude subscription with Hermes, because Hermes wants an API key — something I ran into head-first during my Hermes Agent paperclip experiment. OpenMausBot drives Claude Code directly, so your existing plan just works. It's a genuine middle ground between paid-and-waitlisted Grok Bot and technical-but-free Hermes, a gap I mapped out properly in my Grok Bot vs Hermes breakdown.
Why You'd Want a Free Alternative to Grok Bot at All
Three reasons, all from my own testing this week.
- The waitlist. Early beta means most people simply cannot get in yet.
- The meter. I'm a paying X subscriber and I still burned through the free-trial tokens in about 20 minutes. Twenty minutes.
- The price. Once the trial's gone, proper usage lives on the expensive X plans — $200-a-month territory — and it's still metered.
So the smoothest version of this idea is gated three different ways. I've written up the full head-to-head in OpenMausBot vs Grok Bot; short version, the free one holds up far better than a day-old project has any right to.
WhatsApp for AI Agents: What It Actually Looks Like
Open OpenMausBot and it looks like Telegram or WhatsApp. There's a sidebar of contacts, except every contact is a real AI agent that does work rather than just chatting. Each bot gets its own personality, its own job, its own model, its own memory, its own connected apps and its own computer. Put it next to Grok Bot and the two look strikingly similar.
The underrated win is discoverability. In a normal chat app, that brilliant custom workflow you built three weeks ago is buried in old conversations and you'll never find it again. Here, every agent is saved in the sidebar where you can't lose it. That's the WhatsApp-for-AI-agents idea, and it's what breaks the technical barrier for normal people.
If you want an agent team running on the subscriptions you already pay for, the AI Profit Boardroom breaks down setups like this the day they drop. → Get the playbooks
The Model Picker: One Thing Grok Bot Simply Can't Do
Grok Bot cannot change models. OpenMausBot lets you pick a model per bot: Fable 5, Opus 5, Sonnet 5, Haiku, Codex or Grok 4.5.
Different jobs need different brains. My writing bot sits on the model that writes best. My research bot runs on something else entirely. Which model each bot deserves comes straight from my Goldie Bench side-by-sides, the same testing behind my Grok vs Hermes verdict. You end up building a team of specialists instead of hiring one assistant and hoping it's good at everything.
My Hands-On Demo: The Moments That Sold Me
I created a writing-and-research bot for AI automation news, and three things stood out.
First, it asked for approval before touching anything, then sensibly went straight for my Obsidian vault. Claude already knew how to use that vault, so the bot inherited the knowledge instantly. No setup, no explaining.
Second, it picked up my preloaded Claude skills automatically. My keyword-research skill pulled live Google Search Console data with zero API setup, which genuinely surprised me. If you've already built Claude skills for marketing, they come along for the ride.
Third, the team-building feel. I renamed bots into AI Research Agent, SEO Content Researcher and Email Analyzer in seconds, and the whole thing works in both the web app and the local app.
Approvals: Nothing Happens Without Your Yes
When a bot wants to run a command, edit a file or do anything risky, a card pops up in the chat. Allow or deny, like approving something on your phone. Underneath there's a permission system that turns every risky action into your decision, so the bot never goes rogue on your files.
Honest note: the constant approving could get annoying. I'd far rather have it than not, but you will be tapping allow a lot.
📺 Watch: Grok Bot DESTROYS Hermes Agent?
Every Bot Gets Its Own Computer
This is the feature that made me sit up. Open the computer panel and your bot gets a cloud desktop — a real Linux machine it controls — with a live preview of the screen while it works. You can open that desktop and take over in your browser, or point the bot at your own Mac instead. Under the bonnet it ships with a cloud-desktop service plus computer-use tech from a project called CUA.
Honesty time, though: computer use is slow everywhere right now. In my testing, even Grok Bot got stuck typing hello into Google. Nobody has cracked fast computer use yet, so treat this as a preview of where things are going rather than your daily driver.
Connected Apps: 500+ Tools Through Composio
There's a one-click marketplace built on Composio with over 500 apps — Gmail, Slack, Notion, Linear and hundreds more. Connect an app once, log in once, and every bot on the team can use it. Your morning bot reads Gmail while your project bot updates Notion, all off one connection.
Local-First, With One Honest Caveat
One small server lives on your Mac and manages the agent processes, and your conversations, keys and event logs sit in a folder on your own computer. For a free tool, that's a genuinely tidy architecture.
But let's be straight: you're still using cloud models. Claude, Codex and Grok all send data to the cloud, so this is not local-model AI. If fully local or fully free models are the priority, that's a different build — closer to what I covered in the best free AI model for Hermes Agent.
📺 Watch: FREE Grok 4.5 Course: Automate ANYTHING!
How to Install OpenMausBot
- Grab the Mac app from GitHub. It's a simple download with the server built in.
- Drag it into Applications and open it.
- Make sure at least one AI tool is installed and logged in on your Mac — Claude Code, Codex or Grok's tool. Whatever you have appears in the model picker automatically.
- Create your first bots and pick a model for each one.
Setup was easy for me with one exception: configuring the CLIs. I had Claude Desktop walk me through that part, and it worked. It's Mac-only today, with Windows next and Linux and Ubuntu after that.
The Rough Edges, Because It Launched a Day Ago
This is open source and it literally just launched, so expect some mess.
- Formatting glitches in places. It's launch-day software.
- It only runs on Claude, Codex and Grok for now.
- The approvals get repetitive.
- Agent-to-agent tagging didn't work when I tested it. Grok Bot has that working, and I'd expect a fix, but today it's broken.
- It's not a polished big-company product, and it doesn't pretend to be.
When You'd Still Pick Grok Bot
If you want the smoothest, most polished version of this idea and you don't mind paying, Grok Bot is that product — once you clear the waitlist and accept the meter. For everyone else, the Grok Bot free alternative gets you most of the idea for none of the money.
| Feature | Grok Bot | OpenMausBot |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Paid and metered, behind a waitlist | Free, runs on subscriptions you already have |
| Access | Early beta invite | GitHub download today |
| Models | Fixed, no switching | Per bot: Fable 5, Opus 5, Sonnet 5, Haiku, Codex, Grok 4.5 |
| Agent-to-agent tagging | Works | Broken in my test, for now |
| Polish | Big-company smooth | Day-one open source |
Grok Bot Free Alternative FAQ
Is OpenMausBot really free?
Yes. It's open source and there's nothing to pay for the app itself. The only requirement is at least one AI tool already installed and logged in on your Mac, so in practice you're running it on a subscription you already pay for.
Do I need API keys?
No, and that's the whole point. It uses CLI logins, not APIs. If you've ever gone hunting for a free API for Hermes Agent just to get an agent running, you'll know exactly how big a relief that is.
Does it work on Windows?
Not yet. It's a Mac app today, Windows support is coming, and Linux and Ubuntu are planned after that.
Is it safe to let loose on my files?
Safer than most. Every risky action — running a command, editing a file — triggers an approval card you have to allow or deny, and your conversations and logs live in a folder on your own machine. The one caveat: the models themselves are cloud models, so your prompts still go to Claude, Codex or Grok.
Is it as good as Grok Bot?
It's a different trade. Grok Bot is smoother and its agent-to-agent tagging actually works, but it's waitlisted, priced and metered. OpenMausBot is rougher, free, and lets you pick a model per bot, which Grok Bot can't do at all.
The Verdict
Version one of AI was one assistant in one chat box. Version two is a team of agents, each with a name, a job, a model, connected apps and its own computer. Grok Bot is built on that shape. OpenMausBot is built on that shape. And it's the same shape I've been building with my own Agent OS. When xAI, a solo open-source builder and my own stack all converge on the same design in the same week, that tells you where this is going.
As a Grok Bot free alternative, OpenMausBot is young, occasionally scruffy and completely worth your afternoon. Credit to Milind Soni for shipping it in a day. I had named agents doing real work on subscriptions I already pay for, waitlist or not.
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