MausBot: The Open-Source Grok Bot Alternative at $7K MRR

I use Grok Bot a lot. So when an open-source "Grok Bot alternative" called MausBot kept showing up on my feed, I had to dig in.

What I found is part product story and part GTM lesson. Two founders from Baramati, a town in the Pune district, put a rival app on GitHub about two hours after Grok Bot launched. Eleven weeks later they report about $7.4K in monthly recurring revenue. That figure is self-reported, and TrustMRR verifies it against their payment provider (TrustMRR). The repo has 6.8K stars (GitHub).

To be clear up front: I haven't run MausBot myself yet. This piece covers what it is, how it got here, what early users say, and what I'd want to test before calling it a real alternative.

The two-hour launch

Grok Bot launched on August 11, 2026. The OpenMausBot repo was created the same day (GitHub API). That night, co-founder Milind Soni posted: "I made an Open Source version of the Grok Bot complete with all the features… uses the existing subscriptions you already have." The post got about 495K impressions, 2.5K likes and 3.3K bookmarks (X).

It wasn't a weekend hack built from scratch. Co-founder and CEO Omkar Satpute later explained on Product Hunt that they "were already building something similar." Seeing Grok Bot launch "gave us the push to share our work, make it open source" (Product Hunt comment). Milind said the same thing on X during launch week. He was already working on a similar open-source product, and Grok Bot "just happened to be very similar" (X).

The positioning was sharp from the first reply. Answering people who were discussing Grok Bot's price, Milind wrote: "Something about the 200 dollar subscription doesnt sit right with me tho. I'm building an open source version which works with your existing subscriptions of claude code and codex" (X). Creator Vaibhav Sisinty amplified it the next morning with "Grok Bot launched today. This guy already built an open source version. And shipped it." (X).

Who's behind it

MausBot is made by Supamaus Software Private Limited (mausbot.com). The company calls itself "a small, bootstrapped software company registered in Baramati," run by its two founders, that has "taken no outside investment" (FLOSS/Fund). Milind Soni (@milindlabs) maintains the code and has made about 4.2K commits. Omkar Satpute is co-founder and CEO (pricing page, EveryDev). The site lists the Google for Startups Cloud Program and Claude for Startups (mausbot.com). Both are credit programs, not equity.

What MausBot actually is

Think of a messaging app where every contact is an AI agent. The README says each bot has "its own personality, its own model, its own cloud computer, and its own connected apps. Talk to them like contacts. Watch them work. Approve what matters." (GitHub).

The key design choice is bring your own agent. Bots run on the claude, codex and grok command-line tools already on your machine, using your existing logins, with "no proxy in the middle" (README). The docs also list Cursor, GitHub Copilot, OpenCode, Kimi, Qwen, Hermes and others as supported engines (docs). It's local-first: chats, keys and events stay in a folder on your own computer.

Other things the product says it can do:

They shipped fast. Windows came out on August 13, Ubuntu on August 20, a community-built iOS app on August 26 and Android on September 2 (X, X). MausBot launched on Product Hunt on October 13 and finished #7 for the day (hunted.space).

The business model: free core, paid convenience

The app is free and open source under Apache 2.0. The money comes from keeping your bots running when your laptop is closed (pricing):

Model usage is billed by your own AI provider and, in MausBot's words, "never marked up by us."

The revenue curve is the most interesting part for a founder. EveryDev recorded $30 MRR as of August 25 (EveryDev). TrustMRR now shows $7,391 MRR from 126 active subscriptions, with about 10,000 users claimed (TrustMRR). These are the company's own numbers, so read them that way.

What early users say

Some of the praise is loud. One user wrote that after trying "almost every alternative GrokBot provider… @mausbot_ is by far the best" (pricing page). Another called it "an underrated personal assistant that's been my go-to for several weeks now" (X). In a small poll by Bruno Orlandi on X, it came first with 5 votes, ahead of Grok Bot's 2. His summary was that Grok Bot users say it's more polished, while MausBot users say it does the same things and is open source (X).

The criticism is just as useful. Julian Goldie called it "early and it can be messy." He found the approval cards could get tedious, and one bot tagging another failed in his test (AI Profit Boardroom). A security review pointed out three things: connected-app actions skip the approval cards, "Auto" mode can land on your real desktop, and analytics are on by default. It recommends pinning bots to a virtual machine (Greenlit). Another review flagged that the Windows installer is unsigned and the project's maintenance record is still unproven (RockB). At least one user who tried both said Grok Bot is "another level" (X).

What I'd want to test

As someone who uses Grok Bot a lot, I wouldn't call MausBot an alternative until it passes four tests:

The GTM takeaway

Whether or not MausBot replaces anything in my stack, the playbook is worth stealing. Ship fast into someone else's launch. Name the competitor in your positioning. Give the core away and charge for convenience. Let the community build your iOS app. Two founders, no outside money, and a product that rode the biggest launch of its category within hours. That's a GTM story whatever happens next.