Guide
Every AI Subscription Compared: $5 to $500 a Month
Best AI Tools Editorial·Updated November 7, 2026·5 min read
Guide
Every AI Subscription Compared: $5 to $500 a Month
The short answer
Most people should pay about $20 a month for one AI plan: ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro and Google AI Pro all sit at that price. Cheap tiers such as Google AI Plus at $4.99 and ChatGPT Go at $8 suit light use, and the $100 to $500 tiers only pay off for daily long agent sessions. Pick the ecosystem you already use, and upgrade only when you hit limits.
How we chose
- —Monthly US list price for individual plans
- —What each tier adds over the one below
- —Bundled extras such as coding agents, video and storage
- —Restrictions such as model limits or ads
Checked: Each vendor’s own pricing page, plus reporting on the Sora shutdown and the Cursor acquisition Not done: No hands-on testing of usage limits; we did not measure how far each tier stretches in practice.
Facts as of November 7, 2026 · Nobody paid to be included
What should you actually pay for AI?
The same few vendors now sell plans from $4.99 to $500 a month, and the $20 tier has quietly become the floor for serious use rather than the ceiling. The spread is wide enough that picking wrong costs real money either way — overpaying for capacity you never touch, or throttling yourself on a cheap plan while trying to do daily work.
How these prices were checked
All figures below are US list prices for individual plans, taken from each vendor’s own pricing page; the check date is in the How we chose box. AI pricing changes often — check the linked page before you buy.
Every consumer plan, side by side
| Tier | ChatGPT | Claude | Google AI | Cursor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Entry paid | Go — $8 | — | Plus — $4.99 | Plus — $8 (Grok models only) |
| Standard | Plus — $20 | Pro — $20 ($17 annual) | Pro — $19.99 | Premium — $30 |
| Power | Pro — $100 | Max — $100 | Ultra — from $99.99 | Super — $100 |
| Top tier | Pro — $200 or $500 | Ultra — $200 | Ultra — $199.99 | Ultra — $200 |
| Best for | The widest ladder, with Codex on every plan | An assistant and coding agent in one plan | The cheapest paid entry, with storage bundled | An editor and agent in one app |
ChatGPT
ChatGPT has the widest ladder of the four. Free gets you GPT-6 Luna with limits, Go at $8 raises those limits for light daily use (and may include ads), and Plus at $20 is the default paid plan, adding the larger GPT-6 Astra and Sol models and custom GPTs. Above that, Pro comes in three steps — $100, $200 and $500 a month — which exist mainly for people running long agent and Codex sessions rather than chatting. Codex itself is included on every plan, in limited form on Free and Go.
One thing to know before subscribing for video: Sora is gone. OpenAI closed the Sora app in April 2026 and switched off the API on 24 September 2026, so no ChatGPT tier includes it any more.
Claude
Claude keeps the simplest structure: Free, Pro at $20 a month (or $17 billed annually), Max at $100 for 5× Pro usage, and Ultra at $200 for 10× Pro weekly usage with no five-hour limit for verified accounts. Free includes Sonnet 5.5 and Haiku 5.5; paid plans add Opus 5.5, the current flagship, and access to Fable 5.1, which Anthropic aims at long-running agents.
Best value if you code
Claude Code is included in every paid Claude plan. If you were considering a $20 assistant subscription and a separate coding tool, Claude Pro covers both — which makes it the cheapest serious entry point for developers.
Google AI
Google undercuts everyone at the bottom with AI Plus at $4.99, then matches the market at $19.99 for AI Pro, which Google promotes as the way to reach Gemini 4 Argon, its newest model. AI Ultra runs from $99.99, with a $199.99 tier at 20× Pro usage, and is the plan to pick for video: Ultra includes Veo 3.1, while Pro includes only a limited trial of Veo 3.1 Lite.
The plans bundle Google storage too — 400 GB on Plus, 5 TB on Pro, from 20 TB on Ultra — and Pro adds Gemini in Gmail, Docs and Vids, which changes the maths if you were already paying Google for storage.
Cursor
Cursor is the outlier, and not only on price. SpaceX completed its acquisition of Cursor’s parent company Anysphere on 14 August 2026, which puts the editor in the same group as xAI, the SpaceX subsidiary that builds Grok. That shows up directly in the plans: the $8 Plus tier only offers Grok models, and from Premium at $30 you get cloud agents and AI code review and can use third-party models such as Claude and GPT, billed separately at API list price.
Which tier is right for you?
- 01Occasional use — stay free. All four free tiers are usable for a few questions a day.
- 02Light daily use — Google AI Plus at $4.99 or ChatGPT Go at $8. Cheapest way to stop hitting limits.
- 03Daily work — a $20 plan. Pick the ecosystem you already use; if you write code, Claude Pro includes Claude Code.
- 04Several hours of agent work daily — $100 tiers. Only worth it once you are genuinely being throttled.
- 05Everything-on, all day — $200 and above. Buy this because you measured a limit, not because it is the top row.
A last piece of advice: the $20 plans are close enough on capability that switching costs more in lost context and habits than it saves in features. Pay for one, learn it properly, and revisit in six months.
Sources
Update log
- November 7, 2026Removed the October 2026 date stamp and added sources and a How we chose box. Corrected Claude’s top tier: $200 buys Ultra (10× Pro weekly usage), not “Max 20×”. Corrected Cursor: Premium and above can use third-party models billed at API list price; they are not included. Corrected Veo: full Veo 3.1 is on AI Ultra, while AI Pro has a limited Veo 3.1 Lite trial. Noted that Codex is on every ChatGPT plan. Removed the unverified date of SpaceX’s merger with xAI.
- October 14, 2026First published.
Spotted an error? Email us. Fixes are listed on our corrections page.
Frequently asked
- Which AI subscription is the best value?
- For most people, a $20 plan — ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro or Google AI Pro — is the best value, because it removes most usage limits without the jump to $100. If you write code, Claude Pro is the strongest value at that price because Claude Code is included. If you only use AI lightly, Google AI Plus at $4.99 a month is the cheapest paid plan worth having.
- Is the $200 ChatGPT or Claude plan worth it?
- Only if you are hitting limits on the $20 plan regularly. The expensive tiers mostly buy capacity — more messages, longer agent runs, higher limits — rather than a different experience. Start at $20, watch for throttling, and upgrade when it actually interrupts your work.
- Does any AI subscription still include Sora video generation?
- No. OpenAI closed the Sora app in April 2026 and shut off the Sora API on 24 September 2026. For AI video, look at Google Veo (Veo 3.1 on Google AI Ultra, with a limited Veo 3.1 Lite trial on AI Pro), Kling AI, Runway or Pika instead.
- Why does Cursor’s cheapest paid plan only include Grok models?
- Because Cursor is now owned by SpaceX, whose subsidiary xAI builds Grok. SpaceX completed its purchase of Cursor’s parent company Anysphere on 14 August 2026. The $8 Plus tier is restricted to Grok models; third-party models such as Claude and GPT are available from Premium at $30 a month, billed separately at API list price.
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