$20, $100, $200. In 2026 Anthropic, OpenAI and Google charge almost exactly the same for their individual plans, and Claude Team and ChatGPT Business now even have identical seat prices. The real differences are in usage limits, what is bundled, how enterprise usage is billed and when it is cheaper to pay per token. Here is every plan from Free to Enterprise as of October 2026, in five charts, with a cost model for a 25-person company in Croatia or the DACH region.
The short answer: the price ladder has converged
Two years ago AI pricing was a patchwork. In 2026 the three largest labs use the same ladder: a free tier, a $20 standard plan, a $100 plan with 5x the standard usage and a $200 plan with 20x. Anthropic has sold Claude Max at $100 and $200 since 2025; OpenAI added a $100 ChatGPT Pro tier in April 2026 next to the $200 one; Google's AI Ultra now starts at $99.99 for 5x AI Pro limits with a $199.99 tier for 20x. Below the $20 line, OpenAI (ChatGPT Go, $8) and Google (AI Plus, $4.99) sell cheaper plans, and Mistral undercuts everyone at the standard level with Vibe Pro at $14.99.
Individual plans: Free, $20, $100, $200
At the standard level the plans are now hard to tell apart on price. Claude Pro costs $20 a month, or $17 billed annually ($200 a year), and includes Claude Code, Projects and the Chrome and Microsoft 365 integrations. ChatGPT Plus costs $20 and includes Codex; OpenAI bills its individual plans monthly. Google AI Pro costs $19.99 and bundles 5 TB of storage. Manus Pro costs $20 for 4,000 credits a month, and Mistral Vibe Pro (Le Chat was renamed Vibe in May 2026) costs $14.99 and includes $15 of API credits a month.
The heavy-user tiers are where the labs compete for developers. Claude Max ($100 for 5x, $200 for 20x Pro usage) now also includes $100 or $200 of API credits a month, priority access at peak times and higher output limits. ChatGPT Pro at $100 gives 5x and at $200 20x the Codex usage of Plus. Google AI Ultra at $99.99 or $199.99 adds video generation credits, higher quotas for the agentic coding tool Antigravity and at least 20 TB of storage. Manus sells larger credit packages instead: reported tiers are $40 for 8,000 and $200 for 40,000 credits.
Ads are the other new dividing line. Since January 2026 OpenAI shows ads to logged-in adult users of ChatGPT Free and Go in the US, below answers and never in conversations about health, mental health or politics; Plus and above are ad-free. Anthropic and Mistral sell no ads in their assistants. For companies this is one more reason to keep employees off free consumer accounts; see our guide to shadow AI governance.
Team and business seats: Claude Team and ChatGPT Business now cost the same
The most striking change of 2026 is in team plans. OpenAI cut ChatGPT Business by $5 in April to $20 per seat on annual and $25 on monthly billing, and, according to pricing trackers, added Premium seats at $100 / $125 with 5x usage in August. That is exactly the price structure of Claude Team: Standard seats at $20 / $25, Premium seats at $100 / $125 with 5x Standard usage, for 2 to 150 seats, with SSO, central billing and up to $500 a month of pooled API credits. In both cases you can mix seat types, so only the heavy users get the expensive seat.
Mistral Vibe Team costs $24.99 per user per month and adds domain verification, data export and up to 30 GB of storage per user. Google sells its business assistant as Gemini Enterprise: the Business edition starts at $21 per account for teams of up to 300, the Standard and Plus editions at $30 with enterprise IT controls. Manus Team starts at about $20 per seat with pooled credits.
Enterprise: from flat seats to seats plus usage
At the top end, pricing is moving from all-you-can-eat seats to seat plus metered usage. Anthropic now publishes Claude Enterprise at $20 per seat a month, billed annually with a 20-seat minimum, and bills usage on top at API rates by model. In return companies get SCIM, audit logs, the Compliance API, custom data retention, IP allowlisting and a HIPAA-ready option. OpenAI's ChatGPT Enterprise is still negotiated individually, and Mistral's Enterprise plan, priced on request, includes private or on-premises deployment, custom models, SAML SSO and white labelling, which matters for data that must stay in the EU.
For a 25-person company the differences add up. In our model, 25 Standard seats on Claude Team or ChatGPT Business cost $6,000 a year on annual billing. Giving five power users a Premium seat raises that to $10,800, and paying the same mix monthly to $13,500. Claude Enterprise would cost $6,000 in seats plus usage; with 50 Sonnet 5.5 messages per user per working day, our estimate adds about $4,300 a year.
Subscription or API: where the break-even lies
A subscription is a bet that you will use more than you pay for. To test it, we priced a typical chat message at 3,000 input and 700 output tokens (question, attached context and conversation history plus a medium-length answer) using Anthropic's current API list prices: Haiku 5.5 at $0.10 / $0.50, Sonnet 5.5 at $2 / $10, Opus 5.5 at $4 / $20 and Fable 5.1 at $10 / $50 per million input / output tokens. One message then costs about $0.0007 on Haiku, $0.013 on Sonnet, $0.026 on Opus and $0.065 on Fable.
With 22 working days a month, a $20 plan pays for itself at roughly 70 Sonnet messages, 35 Opus messages or 14 Fable messages per working day. Occasional users are cheaper on the API, through an internal chat tool or a platform that connects to it. Heavy users and anyone running coding agents, which can consume hundreds of thousands of tokens per task, are far better off with a subscription. Automated processes, finally, belong on the API, where model routing, caching and the 50% batch discount cut the bill further.
The volume discount only starts at $200
Compare price with usage and another pattern appears. At Anthropic, OpenAI and Google the $100 tier gives exactly 5x the usage for 5x the price, so it buys more headroom, not a better rate. Only the $200 tier halves the price per unit, to the equivalent of $10 per standard plan's worth of usage. Manus prices its credits linearly at about $5 per 1,000 credits across its plans, and extra credit packs cost more, about $10 per 1,000 according to pricing trackers. Usage limits are reset per five-hour session or per week and are not published in tokens, so "5x" is the vendors' own measure.
| Vendor | Free | Individual | Team | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anthropic Claude | Yes, no ads | Pro $20 ($17/yr); Max $100 / $200 | $25 / $125 per seat ($20 / $100 annual), 2–150 seats | $20/seat (annual, min. 20) + usage at API rates |
| OpenAI ChatGPT | Yes, ads in US | Go $8 (ads); Plus $20; Pro $100 / $200 | Business $25 / $125 per seat ($20 / $100 annual), min. 2 | Negotiated |
| Google Gemini | Yes | AI Plus $4.99; AI Pro $19.99; Ultra $99.99 / $199.99 | Gemini Enterprise Business from $21 | Standard / Plus from $30 |
| Mistral Vibe (ex Le Chat) | Yes | Pro $14.99 incl. $15 API credits | $24.99 per user | Custom, private / on-prem deployment |
| Manus | 300 credits/day, max. 1,500/month | Pro $20 (4,000 credits); $40 / $200 tiers | From ~$20 per seat, pooled credits | SSO plan, on request |
What this means for companies in Croatia and the DACH region
- Choose on capability, not on price. With identical $20 / $100 / $200 ladders and identical team seat prices at Anthropic and OpenAI, list price no longer separates the leaders. Decide on quality for your use cases, data protection terms and integrations; our vendor selection scorecard helps.
- Mix seat types. Most employees need a Standard seat; give Premium seats or Max plans only to the 10–20% who code with agents or work with AI all day. Review usage every quarter.
- Pay annually once the pilot works. Annual billing saves 20% on Claude Team and ChatGPT Business seats and about 17% on Claude Pro. Run the pilot on monthly billing first.
- Plan for VAT and the reverse charge. Consumer prices in Croatia, Germany and Austria include VAT; on business plans billed to a company with a VAT ID, VAT is usually handled by reverse charge. Buy business plans on the company, not on personal cards.
- Keep a light API path. For occasional users and automated workflows, pay per token instead of per seat, and use the falling prices described in our analysis of AI inference costs.
The bottom line
In October 2026 Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini cost the same at every tier from $20 to $200, Claude Team and ChatGPT Business have identical seat prices, Mistral is the cheapest standard plan at $14.99 and Manus sells credits rather than limits. Enterprise pricing is shifting towards a seat fee plus metered usage. For businesses the key decisions are no longer which vendor is cheapest, but which employees need which tier, when to pay annually and which work should run on the API instead.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Claude cost in 2026?
Claude Free costs nothing. Claude Pro costs $20 a month, or $17 a month billed annually ($200 a year). Claude Max costs $100 a month for 5x Pro usage or $200 a month for 20x. Claude Team costs $25 per seat a month ($20 billed annually) for Standard seats and $125 ($100 annually) for Premium seats with 5x usage, for 2 to 150 seats. Claude Enterprise costs $20 per seat a month billed annually, with a 20-seat minimum, plus usage billed at API rates.
Is Claude Pro or ChatGPT Plus cheaper?
Both cost $20 a month on monthly billing. Claude Pro can also be paid annually for an effective $17 a month, while OpenAI bills Plus monthly. The heavier plans are priced the same as well: Claude Max and ChatGPT Pro both cost $100 a month for 5x and $200 a month for 20x the usage of the $20 plan. The difference is in what is included: Claude Pro includes Claude Code, ChatGPT Plus includes Codex, and Free and Go users of ChatGPT see ads, while paid Claude plans and ChatGPT Plus and above have none.
What is the cheapest paid AI chatbot plan in 2026?
Google AI Plus at $4.99 a month (€4.99 in Croatia) and ChatGPT Go at $8 a month are the cheapest paid plans. Mistral's Vibe Pro, formerly Le Chat Pro, costs $14.99 a month and includes $15 a month of API credits. The $20 plans of Claude, ChatGPT, Google and Manus are the standard tier for professional use.
When is the API cheaper than a subscription?
For light chat use. With an assumed 3,000 input and 700 output tokens per message, a message costs about $0.013 on Claude Sonnet 5.5 and $0.026 on Claude Opus 5.5 at list API prices. A $20 subscription breaks even at about 70 Sonnet messages or 35 Opus messages per working day. Agentic coding and long documents use far more tokens per task, so heavy users are usually better off with a subscription, while automated workflows belong on the API.
How does Manus pricing work?
Manus uses credits instead of message limits. The $20-a-month Pro plan includes 4,000 credits a month; free users get daily refresh credits capped at 1,500 a month for the lite model. Higher tiers reported by pricing trackers include 8,000 credits for $40 and 40,000 credits for $200 a month, and a Team plan from about $20 per seat. A single task can use from a few hundred to several thousand credits, so cost depends on the task.
Sources: Anthropic, claude.com/pricing (16 October 2026); Mistral AI, mistral.ai/pricing (16 October 2026); Google, gemini.google/subscriptions (16 October 2026, Croatian prices) and Google Workspace / Gemini Enterprise pricing; OpenAI, "Introducing ChatGPT Go" (16 January 2026) and announcement of the $100 Pro plan (9 April 2026) as reported by Thurrott, eWeek and Neowin; ChatGPT Business price change and Premium seats as reported by IntuitionLabs, Morph and Enway; Manus Help Center and pricing trackers (Lindy, nocode.mba, October 2026). Cost models: AI Workshop calculations.
Which AI plans does your team actually need?
We help companies in Croatia and the DACH region pick the right mix of Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and Mistral plans, set up seats, budgets and data policies, and move repeatable work to the API. As a Claude Certified Architect based in Zagreb, we start with your processes and your numbers.
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