Michael
vsNous Research

One is a workshop. One is a hire.

Nous Research does genuinely good work in public, aimed at people who want to see inside the thing. This page is about whether that is what you want on a Tuesday morning.

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4 min readUpdated September 2026

Who each one was built for.

We have a lot of respect for what Nous ships and we are not going to pretend this is a fight over the same customer. Their work is aimed at builders and researchers who want open weights, open method, and the ability to shape the system themselves. Michael is aimed at the founder who has four jobs on the list and nobody to give them to.

MichaelAI coworker

You @ him like anyone else on the team. He connects to your stack, owns the task from ask to artifact, and stops to confirm before doing anything he cannot undo.

1,000+ toolsShips artifactsWorks unattendedNothing to assemble
Nous Research
Nous PortalOpen research, from Nous

Nous Research's surface onto their own work. Open, inspectable, and built for people who want to understand and extend the system rather than delegate to it.

Open workFor buildersYou shape itInspectable

Same technology. Opposite promise.

Tools it reaches
1,000+
Connected by OAuth in the web app, nothing to host
Nous Portal. Whatever you wire up yourself
Time to first job
3 min
Install, connect, delegate
Nous Portal. As long as building it takes, which is the point
What you end up with
A file
Named, formatted, in your channel
Nous Portal. A system you understand and control

No assembly required.

The whole product is the gap between the ask and the attachment, and that nobody had to build anything to close it.

# growth ⌄
Lisa
Lisa9:02 AM

Audit our Meta and Google spend for May, month over month.

MichaelAPP9:02 AM

Pulling the numbers now. ETA 4 min.

MichaelAPP9:06 AM

Done. Meta CPA is down 12% and ROAS is up to 3.4x. Google pMax is underperforming. I flagged 3 campaigns to pause in the doc.

PDF
ads-audit-may.pdfView PDF in Slack
42

You could build this. People do, and some of them build it on work Nous published. The question this page is really asking is whether building it is your job or a way of avoiding your job.

Line by line. No asterisks.

Who it is for
MichaelThe founder with nobody to hand this to.
Nous PortalBuilders and researchers, by design.
Openness
MichaelProprietary. You get the outcome, not the internals.
Nous PortalOpen work, published in the open. This is their whole posture.
Getting started
MichaelThree minutes, then give him a real job.
Nous PortalYou assemble it.
Your stack
Michael1,000+ integrations, connected by OAuth, curated by us.
Nous PortalWhatever you connect, maintained by you.
Where it lives
MichaelSlack, WhatsApp, email, and the channels your team already uses.
Nous PortalIts own surface.
Deliverables
MichaelFiles. Decks, spreadsheets, dashboards, shipped code.
Nous PortalWhatever you build on top.
Who maintains it
MichaelWe do. Connectors, upgrades, uptime.
Nous PortalYou do, which is also the freedom.
Governance
MichaelConfirms anything irreversible, logs every action, scopes memory per workspace.
Nous PortalYours to design.
Models
MichaelFrontier and open both, with the choosing done for you.
Nous PortalOpen models, which is the whole point of them.
Price
MichaelFrom $19 a month.
Nous PortalOpen work plus whatever running it costs you.

The row that decides it is the first one. If reading the method is part of what you want, nothing on our side of this table is worth the trade. If it is not, every row after that starts to matter.

Three steps, or a build.

This is not a criticism. Building it is the reason to be there. It is only a cost if it was never what you wanted.

Michael3 steps
  1. Add Michael to Slack.
  2. Connect Stripe, Gmail, and one ads account.
  3. Give him a job.
Nous Portal5 steps
  1. Read the work.
  2. Decide what shape you want.
  3. Wire it to your own tools.
  4. Give it somewhere to run.
  5. Keep maintaining that as everything underneath it moves.

What that looks like on a real team.

One customer, the two numbers they measured, and what they said about it.

Phelix.ai
Michael, in production
“The time and money savings of Michael have been incredible. My team is able to operate at a far greater velocity now, enabling us to hit aggressive targets in market expansion.”
Hassaan Ahmed
Hassaan Ahmed
CEO, Phelix.ai
10×
Ticket resolution
5×
Development velocity
Impact
Aggressive market-expansion targets, hit.

Where Nous is the better call.

We would rather you trust this page than convert off it.

You want to see inside.

Open weights, published method, and a community doing the interesting parts in public. If understanding the system is part of the value to you, a closed product cannot give you that at any price.

You are building a product, not doing a job.

If the agent is what you are shipping rather than what is helping you ship, you need the pieces and the license to use them. That is what they are for.

Your constraints are your own.

Your own weights, your own hardware, your own data boundary. There are teams for whom that is not a preference, and no hosted product resolves it.

What each one actually costs.

Open does not mean free, and paid does not mean expensive. The real number on both sides includes the hours.

Michael
From $19/ month
  • Starter $19, Pro $99, Max from $199.
  • Every plan connects tools and ships artifacts.
  • The hours cost: about three minutes of setup.
Nous ResearchNous Portal
Open
  • The work is published in the open.
  • You pay for compute and for hosting it somewhere.
  • The hours cost: building it, then keeping it built.

Pick the one that fits.

Choose Michael if
  • You want work finished, not a system to finish.
  • There is nobody on the team whose job this would be.
  • The task crosses three tools and you own all three.
  • You want it running before lunch.
  • You do not want to maintain connectors.
Choose Nous if
  • You want to read the method, not just the output.
  • The agent is the thing you are building.
  • You need to run your own weights on your own hardware.
  • You enjoy this part. That is a completely valid reason.

Short answers.

Does Michael use open models?
He routes across frontier models and picks the right one per task. You never choose a model, and the answer to this question should never change what you get.
Is Michael open source?
No. The orchestration, the tool catalog, and the routing are ours. We lean on open patterns underneath and say so, but the product itself is not something you can read.
Can I self-host Michael?
Not today. If the data boundary is the hard requirement, that is a real reason to be somewhere else and we will say so on a call rather than waste your time.
What does Michael see in my Slack?
Only the channels you invite him to. Memory is scoped to your workspace and never crosses into another one.
Will he email a customer without asking?
No. Anything he cannot undo stops first. He shows you the exact action and waits. There is no timeout that decides for you.

Skip the build. Give him the job.

Take the task you were going to write a script for this weekend. Hand it to Michael on a Tuesday instead.

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