Pricing sorts Meta's Muse and OpenAI's Dots into separate buying decisions

A shop owner who closes the Muse app at night and wants the agent to keep working on a Shopify or QuickBooks task can try that without paying. Muse is free to start, and both apps are on the Muse for Small Business connector list ^[3][6]. An operations lead who wants the same overnight follow-through in a Slack channel is shopping for Dots ^[9]. That takes a $100-a-month Pro plan or a Business Premium seat, or an admin's approval in an Enterprise workspace ^[3][8].

Both companies pitch the cloud computer. Meta calls its version the Muse Secure VM, and OpenAI gives each dot its own computer and browser ^[5][2]. Here's what a user actually does with either one: reads asynchronous updates and approves the consequential steps, because both agents stop and ask before acting on those ^[12]. Tom's Guide wrote that this approval gate is "quickly becoming table stakes for this category" ^[12]. The same review describes Muse as goal-first, meaning the user hands over an outcome and the agent builds its own plan ^[13].

The controls are written for different people. Sentinel, Muse's permissions system, splits read access from write access ^[5]. Dots uses custom rules, approval requirements and auto-review ^[10]. I think the read-and-write split is easier to explain to an owner approving actions on her own shop. Rules and auto-review assume someone whose job already includes writing policy.

The price gap is at the bottom of the range. Muse's top plan costs $100 a month, the same as the Dots entry plan ^[1]. A year of Dots Pro comes to $1,200, committed before anyone knows whether the agent saves an hour a week ^[2]. The Tom's Guide comparison does not include usage, retention or time-to-value figures for either product, so a buyer is working from the price list and the connector list.

Those lists split along the same line. Dots works inside ChatGPT on web, desktop and mobile and inside Slack and Microsoft Teams, with voice calling and texting in beta ^[9]. It reaches outside apps through ChatGPT's plugin ecosystem, which Tom's Guide puts at more than 4,000 apps ^[10]. Muse's small-business connectors include Asana, Canva, QuickBooks, Shopify, Stripe and Zoom, along with Facebook and Instagram business accounts ^[6]. Meta has also announced commerce partnerships with Walmart, Expedia and Instacart ^[14].

The forcing question for Monday has two parts: who approves the consequential action, and which app it happens in. Put an owner or a workspace admin on one axis, and shop tools with Meta business accounts or Slack and Teams on the other. For an owner working in Shopify or Instagram, Muse's free tier is the test and costs nothing ^[3][6]. An owner who works in Slack is buying one Pro plan at $100 a month, and for now that buys one primary dot ^[3][11]. Enterprise teams working in Teams belong on Dots, and their first meeting is with the workspace admin who controls the beta ^[8]. The last cell, an admin-run team whose work sits in Shopify and Stripe, can run the free Muse trial first, since both are on its connector list ^[6], and bring in Dots only if the pilot justifies $1,200 a year ^[2].