AI Tools Comparison 2026: ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini and More

Nine AI assistants now compete for your monthly subscription, and their price lists have drifted far apart. The entry paid tier ranges from $4.99 to $20 a month, the top individual plans run from $99.99 to $500, and the limits behind each tier are measured in different ways. We checked every vendor's official pricing page on October 27, 2026 and put the tiers, what each one includes and what each tool genuinely does best side by side.

Prices as of Oct 27, 2026, in US dollars, before tax, taken only from each vendor's own pricing or help pages (listed under Sources). Prices vary by country, and several vendors show local currency or exclude VAT, so check the page in your region before you pay. Where a vendor's page does not show a number, we say so rather than fill the gap from a third-party site.

Quick picks

• Best all-rounder: ChatGPT. The widest feature set at every price, from a free tier to Pro at $500.
• Best for writing, long documents and coding agents: Claude. Pro at $20 includes Claude Code, and context reaches up to 1M tokens on some models.
• Best value bundle: Gemini. Google AI Pro at $19.99 adds 5 TB of storage and Gemini in Gmail, Docs and Sheets.
• Cheapest paid entry: Gemini via Google AI Plus at $4.99. ChatGPT Go and Grok Plus follow at $8; Meta One Core is $7.99 but mainly adds image and video generation.
• Best for Microsoft Office users: Microsoft Copilot through Microsoft 365, from $9.99 a month.
• Best for cited research: Perplexity. Every answer carries citations, and Pro adds deep research.
• Best free option inside apps you already use: Meta AI, free in WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger.
• Cheapest API for developers: DeepSeek, with V4.1 Flash at $0.30 per million input tokens and $1.20 output at peak, half that off-peak.
• Best European and open-weight option: Mistral's Vibe, with Pro at $14.99 excluding tax.

Price and tier comparison at a glance

Monthly prices for individuals unless noted. Team and enterprise plans are covered in each tool's section.

• ChatGPT (OpenAI): Free $0 · Go $8 · Plus $20 · Pro $100, $200 or $500.
• Claude (Anthropic): Free $0 · Pro $20 ($17/month billed annually) · Max $100 or $200.
• Gemini (Google): Free $0 · Google AI Plus $4.99 · Google AI Pro $19.99 · Google AI Ultra $99.99 or $199.99.
• Grok (SpaceXSI, formerly xAI): Free $0 · Plus $8 · Premium $30 · Super $100 · Ultra $200.
• Microsoft Copilot: free Copilot app · Microsoft 365 Personal $9.99 · Family $12.99 · Premium $19.99 · Pro $99.99 (monthly only).
• Perplexity: Free $0 · Pro $17/month billed annually · Max $167/month billed annually.
• Meta AI: free for everyday use · Meta One Core $7.99 · Meta One Premium $19.99, for extra AI image and video generation.
• DeepSeek: free chat app · API pay-as-you-go from $0.15 per million input tokens off-peak.
• Mistral Vibe: Free $0 · Pro $14.99 excl. tax · Student $5.99 · Team $24.99 per user.

Two patterns stand out. The $20 tier is still the market's centre of gravity, with ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro, Google AI Pro, Microsoft 365 Premium and Meta One Premium all at or within a cent of it. Above that, every major vendor now sells a $100 to $200 power-user tier, and OpenAI goes further with a $500 plan.

How usage limits actually work

The sticker price tells you less than the limits do. Most competitor comparisons skip this, and it is where plans really differ:

• Rolling windows: Claude limits reset on a rolling five-hour session with weekly caps on top. Google's Gemini limits refresh every five hours up to a weekly limit.
• Multipliers: Claude Max is sold as 5x or 20x Pro usage, Google AI Ultra as 5x or 20x Pro, and Grok's tiers as 4x, 15x and 50x Plus.
• Shared pools: Grok's X Subscription draws one weekly pool across Grok, Grok Bot and Cursor. Microsoft says Family's AI features apply to the subscription owner only.
• Credits: Perplexity sells plans with bonus and monthly credits for its Computer agent. Mistral Pro includes API credits, and Claude Max includes monthly API credits.

ChatGPT (OpenAI)

Tiers and prices

• Free, $0: unlimited text chats with GPT-6, with limited file uploads, image generation, voice, deep research, Codex and ChatGPT Work on desktop.
• Go, $8/month: more messages, uploads, images and voice, and longer memory. OpenAI notes Go may include ads.
• Plus, $20/month: advanced reasoning with GPT-6, access to GPT-6.1 Sol and GPT-6 Astra, expanded deep research, Projects, scheduled tasks, custom GPTs, Codex and ChatGPT Work across desktop, web and mobile.
• Pro, $100, $200 or $500/month (monthly only): Pro-level reasoning with GPT-6 Astra, the always-on Dots agent and maximum deep research. Ultrafast mode is reserved for Pro 500. OpenAI says Pro 200 usage was reduced for new subscribers, with existing subscribers keeping the previous allowance through October 29, 2026.
• Business and Enterprise: Business starts at two users; its price was not shown on the pages we checked. Enterprise is sold through sales.

Context windows scale with the plan: OpenAI lists 27K tokens for GPT Instant on Free, 54K on Go and Plus and 128K on Pro, and 256K for GPT Reasoning on Go and Plus versus 400K on Pro.

Best at

Breadth. ChatGPT bundles chat, image generation, voice, deep research, an agent and the Codex coding agent in one subscription, with the most granular ladder of any vendor, from $8 to $500. For API developers, OpenAI's newest mid-tier model is covered in our GPT-6.1 Terra pricing breakdown, and Codex users can compare it with Codex CLI.

Weak spots

The free and Go context windows are small compared with Claude and Gemini, Go may show ads, and the Pro ladder is monthly only. The recent Pro 200 allowance cut is a reminder that limits can change mid-subscription.

Claude (Anthropic)

Tiers and prices

• Free, $0: chat, web search, file creation and code execution, memory, connectors, Artifacts, Claude Design, Slides and Docs, with Sonnet and Haiku models.
• Pro, $20/month or $17/month billed annually ($200 up front): Claude Code, Claude Science, Projects, Research, Opus models, Claude in Chrome and Microsoft 365, and the top Fable model via usage credits. Anthropic quotes at least five times Free usage per session.
• Max, from $100/month: Max 5x at $100 and Max 20x at $200, monthly only. Max includes $100 or $200 a month in API credits respectively, priority access and Fable access at up to 50% of weekly limits.
• Team: 2 to 150 seats, with Standard seats (more usage than Pro) and Premium seats (5x Standard). Seat prices were not displayed on the page we checked.
• Enterprise: $20 per seat per month plus usage at API rates, billed annually.

Best at

Long-form writing, document work and agentic coding. Claude Code is included from the $20 tier, Anthropic lists context windows of up to 1M tokens depending on the model, and Max's bundled API credits are unusual among consumer plans. Developers can see how Claude Code compares in our AI code review tools roundup, and organisations should read how Claude Enterprise merged chat and Cowork.

Weak spots

No cheaper entry tier between Free and Pro, and five-hour plus weekly limits that heavy users hit. The Fable model is metered with credits rather than included outright on Pro. API prices per million tokens range from $0.50 input and $2.50 output for Haiku 5.5 to $10 and $50 for Fable 5.1.

Gemini (Google)

Tiers and prices

• Free, $0: the Flash-Lite model, image generation, Deep Research, Gemini Live, Canvas and Gems, plus 15 GB of storage.
• Google AI Plus, $4.99/month: Gemini 3.6 Flash, twice the free usage, 400 GB of storage, 200 Flow credits and Gemini in Gmail.
• Google AI Pro, $19.99/month: Gemini 4 Argon and 3.1 Pro, four times the free usage, a 1M-token context window, 5 TB of storage, the Jules and Antigravity coding tools, Gemini in Gmail, Docs and Sheets, YouTube Premium Lite, $10 a month in Google Cloud credits, 200 Colab compute units and 1,000 Flow credits. Chrome auto browse is listed for the US and India.
• Google AI Ultra, $99.99 or $199.99/month: 5x or 20x Pro usage, 20 TB or 30 TB of storage, YouTube Premium, Project Genie, Gemini Agent, and $40 or $100 a month in Google Cloud credits.

Best at

Value and ecosystem. No other $20 plan bundles 5 TB of cloud storage, YouTube Premium Lite and AI inside Gmail and Docs, and Google AI Plus at $4.99 is the cheapest paid AI tier from a major vendor. Developers get Jules, Antigravity, Colab units and Cloud credits in the same plan. Google says its AI plans are for adults 18 and over and available in more than 150 countries.

Weak spots

The free tier runs on the lightest model, and much of the Pro value sits in storage and Google services you may not need. If you already pay for Google One storage, compare carefully before stacking plans.

Grok (SpaceXSI, formerly xAI)

Grok's maker renamed itself from SpaceXAI to SpaceXSI in October 2026, and Grok is now sold through "The X Subscription" on x.ai.

Tiers and prices

• Free, $0: limited chat and agent requests.
• Plus, $8/month: Grok chat, voice, Imagine and Build, Grok API access, Cursor access and the X Premium checkmark.
• Premium, $30/month: four times Plus usage, Grok Bot, the latest Grok models, image and video generation, code hosting and AI code reviews, cloud agents, and ad-free X on most surfaces. xAI's page recommends this tier for people new to AI.
• Super, $100/month: 15 times Plus usage and priority access at peak times.
• Ultra, $200/month: 50 times Plus usage.
• Teams and Enterprise: offered; see x.ai for terms.

Best at

Bundling with X and Cursor. One weekly usage pool covers Grok, Grok Bot and the Cursor coding editor, and the subscription carries X perks such as the checkmark and reduced ads. That makes it the only plan here that doubles as a social media subscription and a coding-tool subscription.

Weak spots

Third-party models used inside Cursor are billed at API list price against your pool, so heavy multi-model coding can drain it fast. The jump from $8 to $30 is steep compared with rivals' $20 tier, and many older comparison articles still list retired Grok plan names.

Microsoft Copilot

Tiers and prices

• Copilot app, free: the standalone Copilot assistant.
• Microsoft 365 Personal, $9.99/month or $99.99/year: one person, 1 TB of storage, and Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook with more usage than free.
• Microsoft 365 Family, $12.99/month or $129.99/year: one to six people and 2 TB shared storage; Microsoft notes the AI features are for the subscription owner only.
• Microsoft 365 Premium, $19.99/month or $199.99/year: extensive Copilot usage plus Researcher, Analyst and Cowork for multi-step tasks.
• Microsoft 365 Pro, $99.99/month (monthly billing only): everything in Premium, 5 TB of storage and the highest usage limits, including agentic features.

Best at

Working inside Office. If your day is in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, Copilot is built into those apps, and Personal at $9.99 bundles the full Office suite and 1 TB of storage for half the price of most $20 AI plans. Microsoft's routing changes are covered in our report on Copilot picking the model for you. Note that the consumer Copilot is a different product from GitHub Copilot, the coding assistant.

Weak spots

Family members do not get the AI features, the most capable tools sit in Premium and Pro, and Microsoft's page describes limits qualitatively ("extensive", "highest") rather than with numbers.

Perplexity

Tiers and prices

• Free, $0: limited daily searches with citations on every answer and access to basic models.
• Pro, $17/month billed annually: expanded access to the Computer agent, 4,000 bonus credits, deep research, a choice of top AI models, document and app creation, and higher limits and memory. Perplexity's plan page did not show a monthly-billing price.
• Max, $167/month billed annually: maximum Computer usage, 35,000 bonus credits plus 10,000 monthly credits, expert-level research, frontier models and priority access to new features.
• Enterprise Pro, $40 per seat per month or $400 a year; Enterprise Max, $325 per seat per month or $3,250 a year. Perplexity says API usage is not included in Enterprise plans.

Best at

Research you can verify. Perplexity is built around web search with citations on every answer, and paid plans let you pick the underlying model per query. Business plans add premium data sources such as PitchBook and Statista, according to Perplexity's pricing page.

Weak spots

Headline prices assume annual billing, the credit system adds a second meter to learn, and the API is billed separately even on enterprise seats.

Meta AI

Tiers and prices

• Free: Meta says Meta AI remains free for everyday use in WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger.
• Meta One Core, $7.99/month: more Meta AI image and video generation, more in-app AI tools such as Restyle on Instagram, and the Instagram Plus, WhatsApp Plus and Facebook Plus features.
• Meta One Premium, $19.99/month: everything in Core with the most room for Meta AI content creation.
• Muse (separate agent product): free with limits, or Power at $20/month (500M Muse tokens a week) and Maximum at $100/month (3B a week). Meta's help centre says Muse subscriptions are in limited testing.

Best at

Zero friction. Meta AI is built into messaging and social apps many people already open every day, with nothing extra to install and no subscription needed for everyday use.

Weak spots

The paid plans are mostly about media generation and social features rather than deeper reasoning or coding. Meta's help centre also says Meta One is in limited testing and options vary by location, so what you see may differ from the announced prices.

DeepSeek

Tiers and prices

• Chat app: free on the web and mobile. DeepSeek does not list a paid consumer subscription.
• API, deepseek-flash (DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash): per million tokens at peak, $0.006 input on a cache hit, $0.30 input on a cache miss and $1.20 output. Off-peak rates are half that.
• API, deepseek-v4-pro: per million tokens at peak, $0.044 cache-hit input, $1.32 cache-miss input and $3.96 output, halved off-peak.
• Search and Fetch APIs: $0.75 per 1,000 successful requests each. DeepSeek says server-side calls from Claude Code, Codex and its own harness are free until per-request billing starts on November 1, 2026 (Beijing time).

DeepSeek's peak hours are 01:00 to 04:00 and 06:00 to 10:00 UTC, Monday to Friday, excluding Chinese public holidays. Both models list a 1M-token context and up to 384K output tokens.

Best at

Price per token. DeepSeek's API is a fraction of Western frontier rates, it accepts both OpenAI-format and Anthropic-format requests, and its off-peak discount rewards batch jobs. For routing it alongside other providers, see our AI gateways comparison.

Weak spots

There is no premium consumer tier with extra features, and some organisations restrict Chinese-hosted AI services under their data policies, so check yours before sending sensitive data.

Mistral Vibe (formerly Le Chat)

Tiers and prices

• Free, $0: limited messages, searches and coding sessions, basic image generation and more than 100 connectors.
• Pro, $14.99/month excluding tax: all-day coding across CLI, IDE and web, spreadsheets and slides, $25.50 a month in API credits and support.
• Student, $5.99/month.
• Team, $24.99 per user per month: up to 30 GB of storage per user, domain verification and data export.
• Enterprise: custom pricing.

Best at

European data residency and open weights. Mistral is a French company, its open-weight models can be self-hosted, and Pro at $14.99 sits below the $20 tier most rivals charge. On the API, Mistral lists Mistral Large at $0.50 per million input tokens and $1.50 output. See our coverage of Mistral's trillion-parameter model.

Weak spots

Pro's price excludes tax, and Vibe's consumer ecosystem is smaller than ChatGPT's or Google's.

Which should you pick?

• You want one assistant that does everything: ChatGPT Plus at $20.
• You write, analyse long documents or code with an agent: Claude Pro at $20, stepping up to Max if you hit limits daily.
• You live in Google's apps or need storage anyway: Google AI Pro at $19.99, or Google AI Plus at $4.99 on a tight budget.
• You live in Microsoft Office: Microsoft 365 Personal at $9.99 or Premium at $19.99.
• You research and need sources: Perplexity Pro.
• You use X and Cursor: Grok Premium at $30 covers both.
• You only want casual help for free: Meta AI in the apps you already use, or the free tiers of ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini.
• You are a developer optimising cost: DeepSeek's API for volume, Mistral for self-hosting and EU data, and Claude or ChatGPT plans when you want coding agents bundled in.
• You are a power user: compare Claude Max, ChatGPT Pro, Google AI Ultra and Grok Super on the limits that matter to you, not the price.

Every tool here has a free way in, so the cheapest test is to run the same three real tasks through two or three free plans before paying. If you pay for more than one, look for overlap: Google AI Pro and Microsoft 365 both bundle storage, and Grok and Claude both bundle coding agents.

Sources

All prices and tier details were taken from these official pages on October 27, 2026:

• OpenAI, ChatGPT pricing
• OpenAI, ChatGPT plans and pricing documentation
• OpenAI Help Center, About ChatGPT Pro tiers
• Anthropic, Claude pricing
• Google One, Google AI plans
• Google, Gemini subscriptions
• x.ai, The X Subscription pricing
• Microsoft, Copilot for individuals
• Microsoft, Compare Microsoft 365 plans
• Perplexity Pro
• Perplexity pricing
• Perplexity Help Center, Enterprise pricing FAQ
• Meta Newsroom, Introducing Meta One
• Meta Help Center, About Muse subscriptions
• Meta Help Center, AI usage for Meta One
• DeepSeek API docs, Models and pricing
• DeepSeek
• Mistral AI, Pricing