Every major AI lab now runs the same basic playbook: a usable free tier, a ~$20/month "Pro" tier for individuals, and an expensive top tier for power users. But the details — what's free, what the top tier actually costs, and how seat pricing works for teams — differ enough to matter.
Entry paid tier comparison
| Provider | Entry tier | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic (Claude) | Pro | $20/mo |
| OpenAI (ChatGPT) | Plus | $20/mo |
| Google (Gemini) | AI Pro | $19.99/mo |
| xAI (Grok) | SuperGrok | $30/mo |
| Perplexity | Pro | $20/mo |
At the entry level, four of the five major players are essentially tied at $20/month. Grok's SuperGrok tier is the outlier, priced $10 higher, though X Premium at $8/month gets you a lighter version of Grok bundled with X/Twitter Premium features.
Where the gap actually opens up
The real pricing divergence shows up above the entry tier:
| Provider | Top individual tier | Price |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | Pro | $200/mo |
| Anthropic | Max 20x | $200/mo |
| AI Ultra | $99.99–199.99/mo | |
| Perplexity | Max | $200/mo |
| xAI | SuperGrok Heavy | $300/mo |
Google's AI Ultra tier is notably the cheapest way into "top tier" AI access, undercutting OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity's $200/month ceiling by roughly half at its lower price point. If you specifically need frontier-model access without the $200/month price tag, that's worth knowing.
Cheapest way to get "some AI" for under $10
If budget is the primary constraint rather than capability, the cheapest paid entry points are:
- ChatGPT Go — $8/month, higher limits than Free
- X Premium (includes Grok) — $8/month
- Gemini AI Plus — $4.99/month, the cheapest named tier from any major lab
Team and business pricing
Per-seat pricing for teams also clusters tightly: Claude Team and ChatGPT Business both land at $25/seat/month on annual billing, with Perplexity's Enterprise Pro coming in higher at $40/seat. If you're pricing out a team rollout, seat count matters more than which provider you pick — the per-seat costs are close enough that model preference should probably drive the decision.
At the individual $20/month tier, price isn't really the deciding factor anymore — the three leaders cost the same. Pick based on which model's outputs you actually prefer for your work, not the invoice.
Should you subscribe to more than one?
A growing number of professionals run two subscriptions — commonly ChatGPT or Claude for daily work, plus a second for specific strengths (Claude for writing and coding review, Gemini for its long context window and Google Workspace integration). At $20–40/month combined, that's still cheaper than most single SaaS tools teams pay for without a second thought.