ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini vs Grok: Subscription Plans

Four AI chatbot subscription price ladders for ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Grok shown side by side from free to $200 tiers

ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Grok all sell a roughly $20 plan and one or two plans at $100 to $200, and three of the four add a $5-to-$8 entry plan. The catch is that each vendor measures "more usage" against a different baseline, so the headline multipliers cannot be compared directly. This post rebuilds the four price ladders on one scale and lists what each plan leaves out.

This comparison is based on official documentation, published specifications, and vendor pricing verified as of October 29, 2026. It is not based on hands-on use. Three official pages could not be read (see the data-gaps note below), and those gaps are marked instead of filled.

The price ladder, tier by tier

Tier	ChatGPT	Claude	Gemini	Grok (The X Subscription)
Free	$0	$0	$0 (Gemini app)	$0
Entry	Go, $8	None	Google AI Plus, $4.99	Plus, $8
Standard	Plus, $20	Pro, $20 monthly or $17 a month on annual billing	Google AI Pro, $19.99	Premium, $30
Heavy	Pro, $100 (5x Plus Codex usage)	Max 5x, from $100	Google AI Ultra 5x, $99.99	Super, $100
Top	Pro, $200 (20x Plus)	Max 20x, price not shown on the page	Google AI Ultra 20x, $199.99	Ultra, $200

Where the numbers come from: ChatGPT Go's $8 US price is from OpenAI's launch post, and Plus's $20 per month from its help center, which does not name a country. The $100 Pro tier was announced in an OpenAI Developer Community thread dated April 9, 2026. That thread does not state the $200 price itself; a commenter quotes OpenAI's help article for it, so treat $200 as relayed. Claude's prices are on its pricing page, Gemini's on the Gemini subscriptions page, and Grok's on the X Subscription announcement.

Why the usage multipliers cannot be compared as printed

Each vendor anchors its multiplier to a different plan:

Gemini's Plus and Pro are quoted against the free plan (2x and 4x), but its Ultra tiers are quoted against Pro (5x and 20x).
Claude's Pro is "at least 5x" Free per five-hour session, and Max is 5x or 20x Pro.
ChatGPT's Pro is quoted against Plus, and the launch thread frames it in Codex usage specifically.
Grok's Premium, Super and Ultra are quoted against Plus (4x, 15x, 50x).

Chaining the multipliers gives a rough common scale. These are derived estimates that assume the multipliers compose as stated, and they measure vendor-defined "usage," not tokens or messages:

Plan	Price	Usage vs the vendor's base	Derived price per base-unit of usage
Gemini Plus	$4.99	2x Free	about $2.50 per Free-unit
Gemini Pro	$19.99	4x Free	about $5.00
Gemini Ultra 5x	$99.99	5x Pro = about 20x Free	about $5.00
Gemini Ultra 20x	$199.99	20x Pro = about 80x Free	about $2.50
Claude Pro	$17 to $20	at least 5x Free per session	at most about $4.00 per Free-unit (at $20)
Claude Max 5x	from $100	5x Pro = at least 25x Free	at most about $4.00
Grok Plus	$8	1x Plus	$8.00 per Plus-unit
Grok Premium	$30	4x Plus	$7.50
Grok Super	$100	15x Plus	about $6.67
Grok Ultra	$200	50x Plus	$4.00

Two readings follow. On Gemini's own scale, the cheapest plan and the most expensive plan cost the same per unit of usage, and only the middle tiers cost double. On Grok's scale, price per unit falls steadily as you climb, so Ultra is half the unit price of Plus. Across vendors, the units are different, so a $4.00 Grok unit and a $2.50 Gemini unit say nothing about which gives more actual work. Claude's rows are ceilings, because the page says "at least 5x", and the Max 20x price is not shown, so that tier is left out. ChatGPT is omitted because OpenAI publishes no Plus-over-Free multiplier, and its Pro multiples are framed in Codex usage.

What changed recently: Grok's plans were rebuilt on October 12

xAI announced The X Subscription on October 12, 2026, replacing the old SuperGrok and X Premium structure for new customers. Its Premium tier at $30 is described as including the benefits of SuperGrok, Cursor Pro and X Premium+, which the announcement says were previously $90 a month combined. That is a drop of about 67% (derived estimate from the announcement's own figures). Existing SuperGrok subscribers can keep their plan or switch with a prorated refund, and the switch is rolling out gradually.

The older material still on the web is out of step. xAI's pricing page still shows SuperGrok at $30 a month with Grok 4, while Grok 4.7 was released on September 21, 2026. It lists SuperGrok Heavy as a column with no price, and the new announcement does not say how Heavy maps onto Super or Ultra. Grok's FAQ says paid plans have used one weekly usage pool since June 2026, and the new plans share that pool with Cursor, with overage billed at API list prices.

Limits and exclusions, plan by plan

ChatGPT

The pricing page shows no dollar amounts for any consumer plan, so every price above comes from other OpenAI pages.
Free lists "limited" messages and uploads, a 27K total context window for GPT Instant, and no scheduled tasks.
Go "may include ads." OpenAI's advertising post says Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise will not.
Plus adds GPT-5.5 Thinking; GPT-5.5 Pro is a Pro-tier model.
The page gives no exact message caps for any tier.

Claude

There is no plan between Free and Pro, so the cheapest path to Opus and Claude Code is $17 to $20 a month.
Free has no Opus, Claude Code, Research or Claude in Chrome.
Every plan shares one pool across Claude's surfaces, resetting on a rolling five-hour window, and paid plans add weekly limits.
On Pro, Fable is available through usage credits. On Max, the page says it is available "at 50% of weekly limits."
Max is billed monthly only, and the page does not show a separate price for the 20x tier. It states that Max 20x includes $200 a month in API credits, and Max 5x includes $100.

Gemini

Limits are compute-based, refresh every five hours, and also have a weekly cap. The page does not define absolute quotas.
Only personal Google Accounts can subscribe, and Workspace customers need a Gemini add-on.
Several features are restricted by region: Gemini Agent is US and English only, and Chrome auto browse is US and India only.
Storage rises sharply with tier (400 GB, 5 TB, 20 TB, 30 TB), which matters if you already pay for Google One separately.

Grok

Existing pages disagree with each other about plan structure and about Heavy.
The announcement does not state annual prices.
Grok's FAQ says Companions are iOS-only and Grok Studio is no longer supported.
When the weekly pool runs out, paid features pause until it resets, unless you buy Extra Usage Credits.

Where the official sources disagree

Gemini Plus and the flagship model. The Gemini subscriptions page says Plus includes Gemini 4 Argon, while Google's AI-plans comparison table does not list it for Plus and shows it from Pro upward. Check the sign-up screen before buying Plus for the top model.
Gemini availability. One plans page gives "over 160 countries" for Plus in its FAQ and "more than 140" in a footnote, while the subscriptions page says more than 140 for all three. Region eligibility is therefore unclear.
ChatGPT pricing. The chatgpt.com plans page omits prices, and a separate OpenAI pricing page (openai.com/chatgpt/pricing) returned an outdated description of the GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 era, so it was not used.
Grok. The x.ai pricing page still describes the old SuperGrok structure, while the announcement from October 12 describes a five-tier replacement.

Which plan for which user

If you want	Look at	Why, from the published pages
The lowest paid entry price	Gemini Plus, $4.99	Cheapest listed plan, 400 GB storage, but flagship-model access is inconsistent between pages
An ad-free paid plan at about $20	ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro, Gemini Pro	All near $20; Plus is stated ad-free by OpenAI, while Go is the one that may show ads
Bundled storage and creative credits	Gemini Pro or Ultra	5 TB to 30 TB plus monthly Flow and Colab credits; no other vendor lists these
A coding-agent bundle	Grok Premium or above, or Claude Pro/Max	Premium includes Cursor Pro; Claude plans include Claude Code from Pro upward
The most usage at the top end	Gemini Ultra 20x or Grok Ultra	Highest stated multipliers, though measured against different bases
A lineup that is not mid-migration	ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini	Grok's lineup was replaced on October 12 and is still rolling out; the other three pages read show no announced restructuring

Who each vendor does not serve well

Budget buyers who want a mid-priced step: Claude has no entry plan below $17 a month.
Anyone who needs exact caps: none of the four pages publishes message or token quotas for consumer plans.
Workspace or business users: Gemini's consumer plans are not available on Workspace accounts, and ChatGPT's Team plan sits outside the consumer ladder.
Buyers outside the US: several Gemini features are region-limited, and OpenAI says Go pricing is localized.

FAQ

Which of the four is cheapest for a paid plan?

Google AI Plus at $4.99 a month is the lowest listed price. ChatGPT Go and Grok Plus follow at $8, and Claude has no plan under $17 a month on annual billing.

Do these plans include coding tools?

Claude Pro and Max include Claude Code. Grok's Premium and higher include Cursor access, with usage shared with Grok. ChatGPT's plans list Codex usage that grows by tier.

Are the usage multipliers comparable between vendors?

No. Each vendor measures its multiplier against a different base plan, and none of them publishes exact quotas, so the figures only compare tiers within one vendor.

Last verified: October 29, 2026. Plan names, prices and limits change often, and Grok's lineup was still migrating to new tiers on the day of checking. Pages that could not be read: openai.com/chatgpt/pricing (outdated content), OpenAI's ChatGPT Go help article (fetch failed) and the X Help Center subscription page (fetch failed).