ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini subscriptions: which plan is worth it

Updated November 2, 2026. Researched and drafted with AI help; every figure is checked against the linked source.

All three big assistants now sell plans at almost the same prices: about $20 a month for the main paid plan and $100 or $200 for heavy use, with OpenAI adding a $500 tier. What differs is what the money buys: which models you get, how limits work, and the extras (Google gives you storage, Anthropic gives Max users API credits). This guide lays the plans side by side, using prices we checked on the official pages on October 19, 2026, and works out when paying per token through the API would cost less.

All prices are US dollars per month for individual plans, billed monthly. The live list is on our plans page.

The plans side by side

Plan	Price / month	Headline models	What sets it apart
ChatGPT Go	$8	Default model GPT-5.6 Luna (per OpenAI’s help article)	More messages, uploads and image creation than Free; “may include ads”
ChatGPT Plus	$20	GPT-6 reasoning (Medium and High), GPT-6.1 Sol	Expanded deep research, memory and Codex
ChatGPT Pro	$100 / $200 / $500	Pro reasoning powered by GPT-6 Astra	No five-hour limit; Ultrafast mode only on $500
Claude Pro	$20 ($17 billed yearly)	Opus, Sonnet, Haiku	Claude Code, Claude in Chrome, more Projects
Claude Max	$100	Same as Pro	5x Pro’s usage, $100 of API credits
Claude Ultra	$200	Same as Pro	10x Pro’s weekly usage, no five-hour limit for verified accounts, $200 of API credits
Google AI Plus	$4.99	Flash model; page also lists Gemini 4 Argon	2x Free’s limits, 400 GB storage
Google AI Pro	$19.99	Gemini 4 Argon, Pro model	4x Free’s limits, 5 TB storage, Veo 3.1 Lite trial
Google AI Ultra (5x)	$99.99	Gemini 4 Argon, Pro model	5x AI Pro’s limits, Veo 3.1, 20 TB+ storage
Google AI Ultra (20x)	$199.99	Same as Ultra (5x)	20x AI Pro’s limits

None of the three publishes a fixed number of chat messages per plan. Limits are given as multiples (Claude and Google) or as rough ranges (OpenAI’s Codex estimates), so the multiples above are the most precise comparison the companies allow.

ChatGPT: Go, Plus and Pro

Go ($8) is OpenAI’s cheap tier. The pricing page lists more messages with tools, more uploads, more image creation and longer memory than Free, and says “this plan may include ads”. OpenAI’s help article on models says the default model for Free and Go is GPT-5.6 Luna and that the higher thinking levels are not included (the comparison table on the pricing page lists GPT-6 Luna for both, so the two pages don’t fully agree). The pricing page’s comparison table gives Go a 54K-token window for instant answers and 256K for reasoning (Free: 27K).

Plus ($20) adds “advanced reasoning models with GPT-6”: the Medium and High thinking levels in chat, and OpenAI’s help article says Plus includes GPT-6 Astra in ChatGPT Work and Codex. The context windows match Go’s: 54K instant, 256K reasoning. For Codex, OpenAI gives estimates rather than limits: per five-hour window, roughly 15–160 messages on GPT-6.1 Sol, 5–45 on GPT-6 Astra and 350–3,000 on GPT-6 Luna, and it says “these estimates are not fixed message limits”.

Pro ($100, $200 or $500) has “no five-hour limit” and adds the Pro reasoning option, which OpenAI says is powered by GPT-6 Astra, along with a 128K instant and 400K reasoning window. OpenAI’s help article lists GPT-6 Pro for the $100 and $200 tiers, and it is not unlimited: the article says a Pro subscription “does not include unlimited use of the GPT-6 Pro model”. Two dates matter if you are on or considering Pro:

Ultrafast mode is included only on Pro $500. It uses included usage at 8x the Standard rate.
Pro $200 is open to new subscribers again at $200, but with a lower usage allowance. Subscribers who were active between September 22 and September 29, 2026 keep the old allowance through October 29, 2026, then move to the lower one.

Claude: Pro, Max and Ultra

Claude Pro ($20, or $17 a month billed yearly as $200 up front). Anthropic says it gives “at least 5x more usage per 5-hour session than Free” and adds Opus models, Claude Code, Claude in Chrome and more Projects. Free users get Sonnet and Haiku but not Opus or Claude Code, and up to 5 Projects.

Max ($100) gives “five times the Pro plan’s usage every five hours and every week”, according to Anthropic’s help center. Ultra ($200) is the plan that used to be called Max 20x: Anthropic says existing Max 20x subscribers “move to Ultra automatically, with no price change”. The help center describes Ultra as “10 times the Pro plan’s usage every week”, and “verified Ultra accounts don’t have a five-hour limit” (new accounts keep a temporary limit until they are verified). Both have a weekly limit across all models plus a separate weekly limit for Fable, and both are monthly only. Our Claude Max vs Ultra guide goes through the differences in detail.

The detail most people miss: Max includes $100 and Ultra $200 a month of Claude API credits. If you also build with the API, that changes the maths. At Claude Sonnet 5.5’s API price ($2 in / $10 out per million tokens), $100 covers about 11,100 of the chat requests used in our cost per 1,000 requests guide (2,000 tokens in, 500 out).

Google: AI Plus, Pro and Ultra

Google’s plans are the cheapest at each level and bundle Google One cloud storage, so they compete on more than chat:

Google AI Plus ($4.99): access to the Flash model (the page also says Plus includes Gemini 4 Argon), 2x higher limits than Free, 400 GB of storage and 200 Google Flow credits.
Google AI Pro ($19.99): access to Gemini 4 Argon and the Pro model, 4x higher limits than Free, 5 TB of storage, 1,000 Flow credits, a limited trial of Veo 3.1 Lite, plus Jules and Google Antigravity.
Google AI Ultra ($99.99 or $199.99): 5x or 20x AI Pro’s limits, video generation with Veo 3.1, storage starting at 20 TB, and 10,000 or 25,000 Flow credits.

If you already pay for Google One storage, the effective price of the AI part is lower than the sticker price. If you don’t need storage, compare on the AI features alone.

Where Grok fits

xAI sells Grok through The X Subscription: $8 Plus, $30 Premium, $100 Super and $200 Ultra. The $30 middle tier is the odd one out against the $20 plans above. Our Grok 4.7 guide covers the switch from SuperGrok and the API side.

Subscription or API: the break-even

A $20 plan only saves money if you use it a lot. Here is what $20 buys through each provider’s API, using the chat request from our cost guide (2,000 input tokens, 500 output tokens, no caching) and list prices on October 19, 2026:

API model	Price in / out per 1M	Cost per chat	Chats for $20	Per day (30 days)
GPT-6 Luna	$0.10 / $0.50	$0.00045	44,444	1,481
Claude Haiku 5.5	$0.10 / $0.50	$0.00045	44,444	1,481
Gemini 3.8 Flash	$0.75 / $3.75	$0.003375	about 5,900	about 197
Claude Sonnet 5.5	$2 / $10	$0.009	2,222	74
GPT-6.1 Sol	$2 / $10	$0.009	2,222	74
Gemini 4 Argon	$2 / $10	$0.009	2,222	74
Claude Opus 5.5	$4 / $20	$0.018	1,111	37
GPT-6 Astra	$10 / $50	$0.045	444	about 15

What this shows:

Light users pay less on the API. If you send fewer than about 70 mid-tier messages a day, $20 of Sonnet 5.5, GPT-6.1 Sol or Gemini 4 Argon tokens covers you. Gemini 4 Argon’s price is introductory: from December 1, 2026 it rises to $4 / $20, which halves that to 1,111 chats. Gemini 3.8 Flash’s price is a promotion too: $1.50 / $7.50 from January 1, 2027, or about 2,960 chats for $20.
Long conversations flip it. Each new message in a chat app resends the whole history, so real requests grow far past 2,000 tokens. A 20,000-token conversation costs ten times the input above. That is where flat-price plans win, and where prompt caching matters if you use the API.
Plans include things the API doesn’t. Apps, memory, deep research, image creation, Claude Code or Codex usage, and Google’s storage all come with the plan. The API gives you raw tokens.

To run the numbers on your own usage, use the cost calculator. The plans page also has a budget filter that shows every plan under a monthly amount.

Which plan for whom

Mostly quick questions, tight budget: Google AI Plus ($4.99) or ChatGPT Go ($8). Go may show ads; Plus includes storage.
Daily use, one assistant: the $20 tier of whichever model you like best. Claude Pro drops to $17 a month if you pay yearly. Google AI Pro adds 5 TB of storage. ChatGPT Plus adds GPT-6 reasoning and Codex.
Coding all day: Claude Max or ChatGPT Pro. Claude Max adds API credits; ChatGPT Pro removes the five-hour limit. Check the vote charts for how each model is feeling this week before you commit.
Building an app: skip the consumer plans and pay per token. Start with the price table and compare models.

Prices and limits change often. We recheck every plan against the official pages on each update; the plans page always shows the latest.