Most of the big assistants charge about the same for their main plan, so the real question isn't price — it's which one fits the work you actually do every day.
For most people, ChatGPT Plus ($20/mo) is the safest single subscription: unlimited text chats, 10 Deep Research runs a month, custom GPTs and Codex. Pick Claude Pro ($20/mo) if you mostly write or code, and Google AI Pro ($19.99/mo) if you live in Gmail and Docs — it also bundles 5 TB of storage.
| App | Free tier | Paid from | Top plan | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | Yes | $8/mo | $500/mo | Everyday writing, brainstorming, image generation, casual coding |
| Claude | Yes | $20/mo | $100–200/mo | Document analysis, research papers, nuanced writing, software engineering |
| Gemini | Yes | $4.99/mo | $99.99–199.99/mo | Google ecosystem users, video generation, very long documents (1M tokens) |
| Perplexity | Yes | $20/mo | $200/mo | Research with verifiable sources, fact-checking, exploring unfamiliar topics |
| Copilot | Yes | $19.99/mo | $99.99/mo | Excel data, Word drafting, PowerPoint decks, Outlook triage |
| Poe | Yes | $4.99/mo | $249.99/mo | Power users who want to compare GPT, Claude, Gemini and niche bots without juggling separate subscriptions |
| Grok | Yes | $30–40/mo | $300/mo | Current events, X/Twitter integration, less-filtered responses |
Monthly prices in US dollars before tax, from each vendor's official pricing (US list price; weekly-billed plans converted to a monthly figure). Updated October 7, 2026
Plus dropped its weekly caps in August 2026, so text chat is unlimited, and one model (GPT-5.6 Sol) now has a reasoning-effort slider instead of a confusing model menu.
Pick it if: you want one assistant for a bit of everything — writing, images, voice and quick code.
Full ChatGPT pricing →Pro gets Opus 5.5 — Anthropic's recommended default since September — plus Projects, Research and Claude for Microsoft 365. No image generation, and limits run on a rolling 5-hour window.
Pick it if: your days are long documents, careful writing or software, and you don't need images.
Full Claude pricing →AI Pro pairs full Gemini 3.1 Pro, Deep Research and Veo 3.1 Lite video with 5 TB of storage and YouTube Premium Lite — extras many people already pay for separately.
Pick it if: you already pay Google for storage or work in Gmail, Docs and Drive.
Full Gemini pricing →Pro lifts you from 5 to 300+ Pro searches a day and lets you switch between GPT-5.6, Claude Sonnet 5 and Sonar 2 — with sources on every answer.
Pick it if: you mostly use AI to look things up and need to check where answers come from.
Full Perplexity pricing →Microsoft 365 Premium is really an Office subscription with advanced Copilot inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, plus up to 6 TB of shared OneDrive. Only the account owner gets the Copilot AI.
Pick it if: you'd pay for Microsoft 365 anyway.
Full Copilot pricing →One subscription opens 100+ models and bots, including GPT, Claude and Gemini — but usage is counted in points that burn at different rates per model.
Pick it if: you want to try several frontier models without three separate subscriptions.
Full Poe pricing →SuperGrok raises the free tier's limit of 2 prompts every 2 hours and adds Deep Search, but at $30–40/mo it's the most expensive entry plan of the big assistants, and quality is less consistent than the frontier leaders.
Pick it if: you follow news on X all day and want an AI that reads the timeline.
Full Grok pricing →ChatGPT Free now has unlimited text chats, Gemini's free tier is among the most generous, and DeepSeek has no paid plan at all. Use one for two weeks. Pay only when you keep running into something specific — Claude's daily cap, Perplexity's 5 Pro searches, or the lack of Deep Research — and then buy the plan that removes that exact limit.
You don't have to jump straight to the main plan. ChatGPT Go ($8/mo) adds memory and projects to the free model and lifts its limited image-generation allowance, and Google AI Plus ($4.99/mo) doubles Gemini's free limits and adds 400 GB of storage. Claude has no in-between tier, though Claude Pro is cheaper per month on annual billing.
If you use AI daily for work, usually yes — paid plans unlock stronger models, higher limits and tools like Deep Research. For a few questions a week, the free tiers of ChatGPT, Gemini or DeepSeek are enough.
They're practically the same: ChatGPT Plus is $20/mo and Google AI Pro is $19.99/mo. Google's plan includes 5 TB of storage and YouTube Premium Lite, which tips the value its way if you'd use them.
Not the official apps, but Poe gives access to 100+ models (including GPT, Claude and Gemini) under one points-based plan, and Perplexity Pro lets you pick GPT-5.6 or Claude Sonnet 5 inside its search.
How we choose: prices come from each vendor's official pricing page and are re-checked every week. We take no affiliate fees, so rankings aren't for sale.