OpenAI dots and xAI's Grok Bot answer the same question, how to give an AI agent real work that continues after you close the laptop, with two different shapes. dots is one always-on personal agent inside ChatGPT, on OpenAI's cloud computer, with "teams of dots" promised for later. Grok Bot is a roster of named Bots on a Cursor-hosted cloud computer that pass work to each other, and with Team Bots a whole team can share one in Slack. If you want several named agents today, Grok Bot has them; if you live in ChatGPT and want one capable agent with the widest app reach, dots is the one. This OpenAI dots vs Grok Bot comparison holds as of 14 October 2026.
dots launched on 29 September 2026 and has had no release-notes entry since; Grok Bot shipped three releases between 2 and 7 October, another on 11 October, and new pricing on 12 October. We build DigiSapiens, a third shape, so it gets a short section with its weak points.
Two bets at a glance
Every dots and Grok Bot cell comes from OpenAI, xAI or Cursor pages read on 14 October 2026.
| OpenAI dots | Grok Bot | DigiSapiens | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price | ChatGPT Pro, $100 a month; Business Premium, two seats minimum | The X Subscription Premium, $30 a month; Cursor Pro, $20, for existing subscribers | Closed beta; price not published |
| Metering | First dot included; terms after month one unpublished | Weekly usage; on Cursor plans, then on-demand by token cost | Nothing metered |
| Model | GPT-6 Astra | Cursor picks; no picker | Your own Claude Code, Codex, other CLI or API key |
| Several named agents | Not today; "teams of dots" over time | Yes | Yes |
| Shared with a team | Your dot in Slack or Teams | Team Bots in Slack, public beta | Channels with people and agents |
| Memory | Cannot be viewed or edited item by item | Ask the Bot in chat; no browse screen | Per agent, with its name and role |
| Approvals | Custom Rules, Auto-review, takeover | Allow once, Always allow, Deny; Custom Rules | Drafts wait for the owner |
| Runs on | A cloud computer per dot | One Cursor-hosted computer per user | The owner's Mac |
Who each one is for, and who can get it
Start with the plan you already pay for, because neither product is sold on its own.
dots is a ChatGPT Pro feature first. It is rolling out to Pro users in markets excluding the European Economic Area, Switzerland and the UK, and to Business Premium users across all supported regions. Enterprise, Edu and Healthcare get a beta turned off by default; Free, Go and Plus do not get it, and nobody under 18 does. You can create a dot in the ChatGPT app on iOS or Android as well as on desktop (Mac or Windows app, or web), though not on mobile web, then message or call it from desktop, web, mobile, Slack and Teams; plugins connect it to over 4,000 apps. It suits someone already on Pro who wants ChatGPT to follow a project through.
Since 12 October, new customers get Grok Bot with The X Subscription, one plan for Grok, Grok Bot, Cursor and X Premium, on Premium and above; the $8 Plus plan excludes it. Existing subscribers keep it through a Cursor plan (Pro, Pro+, Ultra, Teams, Enterprise), a SuperGrok, SuperGrok Plus or Heavy subscription, an X Premium+ link, or a Grok Business seat; SuperGrok Lite is excluded. Its apps cover macOS, Windows, Linux, iPhone and Android. No region limit is stated for the app, though tagging @bot on X is unavailable in Australia, the UK, the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. Team Bots is a public beta on Teams and Enterprise plans. It suits a Cursor user or small team who wants agents with names and jobs rather than one assistant.
Pricing and metering: one publishes the mechanism, the other neither
dots starts at $100 a month on Pro 100. A Business Premium seat is $100 a month billed annually or $125 monthly, and Business is sold to teams of 2 to 200 employees, so the smallest Business setup with dots is two Premium seats. The first dot is included; more dots come "in the future", price unstated. The release notes say dots usage will not count toward plan allowances "for the next month" and OpenAI will "share usage terms for each plan" after that; counting from 29 September puts the end near 29 October, though OpenAI names no date. The launch post adds that Codex and ChatGPT Work tasks a dot starts "count toward your usage limits as usual". Users also report an undocumented "abuse prevention limit" with no reset time, one break lasting about 13.5 hours on 7 October, which OpenAI Support could not explain.
Grok Bot's pricing changed on 12 October with The X Subscription. Cursor's and xAI's pricing pages now list Free, Plus at $8, Premium at $30, Super at $100 and Ultra at $200 a month, plus Teams from $30 per seat, and Grok Bot comes with Premium and above. Cursor's Matt Palmer wrote that new sign-ups go to the new plans, where Grok, Cursor and X share one weekly usage pool; tiers are sized only relative to Plus (4x, 15x, 50x). Existing Cursor Pro ($20), Pro+ ($60), Ultra ($200) and Teams Standard ($40) and Premium ($120 per user) subscribers can keep their plans. On those Cursor plans the mechanism is published: paid access includes weekly usage that resets weekly, and when it runs out, extra usage continues as on-demand billed by token cost if you enable it. "A limit is not a hard stop in the middle of a run." The size of each weekly grant is not published; the plan page ranks tiers only relatively. Usage shows for the whole account, not per Bot, and one Ultra user reported reaching 99 percent of the week in three days.
Models, rosters and teammates
Neither product lets you choose the model, and that is where the similarity ends.
dots runs on GPT-6 Astra, and stayed there when GPT-6 Sol became the ChatGPT default on 7 October. Grok Bot's security page says "There is no customer-facing model picker, and the serving mix can change over time with no fixed vendor set guaranteed." Elon Musk posted on 7 October that Grok Bot would "use the best back end model for any given task, including Claude Opus 5.5"; as of 14 October no xAI or Cursor page names those models, though the 11 October release notes say that when a model is unavailable in your region, Bots fall back to Grok.
On rosters the bets diverge. OpenAI ships "your primary dot" and puts teams in the future tense: "Over time, we envision teams of dots working together on your behalf." A thread on OpenAI's community forum argued on 9 October that "limiting users to a single Dot significantly restricts what we can accomplish." Grok Bot was built around the roster: "Put a few Bots in the same thread and they pass work between themselves."
Shared use is where Grok Bot has moved furthest. A Team Bot is "one Bot that your whole team talks to," with its own handle and Slack app, team memory every teammate's conversation reads, and private notes per person. A dot can post in Slack or Microsoft Teams with its own identity, but one dot belongs to one person; no team-owned dot is documented.
Memory, approvals and where the work runs
Memory first, because this is where the two look most alike. OpenAI's FAQ is explicit: "You currently cannot view, delete or directly modify individual dot memories." Deleting the dot's memories means deleting the dot. For Grok Bot the Team Bots doc says: "To see what the Bot has saved for the team, ask it in chat. To correct or remove something, tell it." There is no browse screen, Auto Review does not cover memory writes, and on 5 October Cursor staff confirmed the Bot Instructions field "didn't make it into the new layout" of the desktop app, and later called the simpler desktop pane "an intentional redesign".
Approvals have converged, down to the vocabulary. dots offers four Custom Rules choices per action, from "Take action without asking" to "Hand off to you", with Auto-review checking planned actions against them and a mandatory takeover for steps like changing a password. Grok Bot offers Allow once, Always allow and Deny; since v0.68.0 on 5 October its approval cards name the Bot and quote its instruction, and its saved rules are now also called Custom Rules. One dots user reported on 2 October that an approval forwarded through a delegated task "was considered untrusted"; test that before relying on delegation.
Where the work runs is the deepest difference. Each dot "works on its own cloud computer", with local access off by default. Grok Bot "runs only on Cursor-hosted cloud computers"; all of your Bots share one persistent computer, a Firecracker microVM per user. Both had a rough first week of October: Cursor staff confirmed that routines were marked Failed under high load on 8 October and missed runs would not be replayed, while dots users reported calls failing to connect on 7 and 8 October.
A third shape: DigiSapiens
We build DigiSapiens, and it makes the opposite bet to both: the agents run on your own computer with your own Claude Code or Codex subscription, or another agent CLI or API key. Nothing is metered or resold. Several named agents, each with a role, a memory and an owner, work in channels next to people, with projects, issues and pull requests; outward-facing or structural work waits as a draft for the owner's approval. Setup is one conversation with Digi, the AI Chief of Staff, who proposes agents and channels and sets them up once approved.
ETREXIO, the two-person software studio in Istanbul where the idea started in December 2024, is DigiSapiens' first client and runs its daily work this way. The question dots and Grok Bot users are asking this month, what a week of agent work will cost once the launch window closes, has a known answer for us: the agents spend the Claude Code and Codex subscriptions we already pay for, within those plans' own limits. The tradeoffs are real: Mac only (iPhone and Android are on the way), agents that stop when the owner's Mac does, no cloud computer, a closed beta with a waitlist, and no published price after the first six months free for people on the list.
How to choose, by situation
- Already on ChatGPT Pro, one capable agent with the widest app reach: dots, with month-two usage terms unpublished and the EEA, Switzerland and the UK excluded.
- Several named agents handing work to each other today: Grok Bot, from $30 a month on The X Subscription Premium plan, or on a Cursor plan you already have. On a Cursor plan, set an on-demand limit before the weekly grant runs out.
- A small team wants one agent everyone can talk to in Slack: Grok Bot Team Bots (public beta), or a dot with its own Slack identity.
- Agents on your own Claude Code or Codex login, unmetered, next to people in channels, Mac only and closed beta accepted: DigiSapiens.
- In the EU or the UK: Grok Bot states no region limit for its app; dots on Pro does not reach you yet.
The hosted agents from other labs are in our AI coworker platforms comparison.