ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini: prices and limits 2026
This article was updated on 5 October 2026 with the new model access per Gemini subscription (earlier on 30 September 2026 with GPT-6.1 Sol and the new ChatGPT Pro tiers, on 29 September 2026 with Claude Sonnet 5.5, on 24 September 2026 with the latest models in each subscription; originally rewritten on 6 September 2026).
Which of ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini is the smartest? Outside the makers’ own marketing, that is nearly impossible to prove: the three have converged, and every vendor measures in its own favour. What is down in black and white, though: prices and limits. That is where things have moved fast in 2026: all three are keeping subscription prices stable and tightening the meter. Since 6 September, prices have stayed largely the same, with one exception: at DevDay (29 September), ChatGPT Pro gained a third, pricier tier. The models changed far more: on 22 September, Claude Opus 5.5 and GPT-6 Sol and Luna launched, followed on 28 September by Claude Sonnet 5.5 and a day later by GPT-6.1 Sol, at exactly the same API price. So skip the benchmark scores and compare what a euro buys you in usage.
How much does Claude cost exactly?
You will find every Claude plan and all API prices side by side in our guide to Claude pricing.
Quick answer, as of 29 September 2026 (amounts per month, excluding VAT; Belgium adds 21%):
| Claude plan | Price per month | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Free | €0 | Sonnet 5.5 and Haiku, limited usage |
| Pro | €18, or €15 billed annually ($20 or $17) | Opus 5.5, Sonnet 5.5 and Haiku, plus Claude Code; Fable 5.1 only via paid usage credits |
| Max 5x | €90 ($100), monthly only | 5x more usage than Pro, Fable 5.1 up to 50% of weekly limits |
| Max 20x | €180 ($200), monthly only | 20x more usage than Pro, Fable 5.1 up to 50% of weekly limits |
| Team | $20 or $25 per seat (Standard), $100 or $125 (Premium) | lowest amount billed annually; Fable only included on Premium seats |
| Enterprise | $20 per seat plus usage at API rates | custom |
According to claude.com/pricing, shown prices exclude tax. With 21% Belgian VAT, you pay €21.78 for Pro (€18.15 billed annually) and €108.90 or €217.80 for Max. Dollar prices come from that page itself; euro prices come from Dutch-language overviews of Anthropic’s euro price list. If you have a VAT number, you can add it to your Claude account and the reverse charge applies. Claude measures usage with a rolling five-hour window plus a weekly limit. Pro gives you at least five times as much per session as Free; Max gives five or twenty times as much as Pro. Claude Code is included in all paid plans and draws from the same pot. If you hit your ceiling, you can turn on “usage credits” on a paid plan, which you pay for at API rates; on Pro, that is the only way to access Fable 5.1. What makes Fable 5.1 so expensive at those rates is in our analysis.
What the subscriptions cost
The three price ladders look strikingly similar. Amounts per month in euros, as of 5 October 2026. Since 6 September, only ChatGPT Pro changed: it has had three tiers since 29 September. At Gemini, prices stayed the same, but from 9 October which models you get per plan is changing. Note: OpenAI and Google show consumer prices with VAT, Anthropic without. With Belgian VAT, Claude Pro therefore costs €21.78 and Max €108.90 to €217.80.
| ChatGPT | Claude | Gemini | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | €0 (GPT-5.6 Luna) | €0 (Sonnet 5.5 and Haiku) | €0 (3.6 Flash, limited 3.1 Pro; from 9 October Flash-Lite only) |
| Entry | Go, €8 | none | AI Plus, €4.99 (Flash-Lite and Flash; Pro disappearing soon) |
| Mid-tier | Plus, €23 | Pro, €18 (€15 billed annually) | AI Pro, €21.99 |
| Top | Pro, from €103 (three tiers: $100, $200 or $500) | Max, €90 to €180 | AI Ultra, €99.99 to €219.99 |
Sources: pricing pages of OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, checked on 6 September 2026; all three checked again on 30 September 2026 (Google again on 5 October 2026, with Google’s help article on the new model access), along with OpenAI’s explanation of Pro tiers. Claude amounts exclude VAT; the rest include it.
Notable: Google’s AI Plus at €4.99 is by far the cheapest paid entry (double limits, Gemini inside Gmail, 400 GB storage), though Pro is disappearing from it soon; what changes per Gemini plan, you can read here. For OpenAI’s Go, the pricing page literally states “This plan may include ads”, and you do not get Sol or Astra with it, although Free and Go users may try GPT-6 Luna in the desktop app. At the top, all three are close once you align for VAT: Gemini AI Ultra from €99.99, ChatGPT Pro from €103, Claude Max from €108.90. Gemini AI Ultra runs up to €219.99 but then gives twenty times the limits of AI Pro and bundles over 20 TB storage and YouTube Premium.
ChatGPT Pro has come in three tiers since DevDay on 29 September: Pro 100, Pro 200 and Pro 500, at $100, $200 and $500 a month. The Belgian pricing page only shows “from €103”. According to OpenAI, Pro 500 gives 25 times the usage of Plus and is the only Pro tier with Ultrafast, a faster mode. Watch out with Pro 200: if you sign up now, you get less usage for the same $200 than before; existing subscribers keep their old allowance until 29 October 2026.
For business, OpenAI and Anthropic both bill in dollars, at exactly the same price points: OpenAI’s Business costs $20 per user per month billed annually or $25 monthly; Business Premium is $100 or $125; Claude Team charges the same for Standard and Premium seats. Google takes a different path: since early 2025, Gemini is included in Workspace subscriptions. We worked out separately what AI costs a company in total.
The meter is the real price
What you get for those amounts is now metered more tightly by all three, especially on the top models:
| Plan | Top model | What the meter says |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT Plus (€23) | GPT-6 Astra | 5 to 45 messages per 5 hours; on Plus, Astra only in Work and Codex |
| ChatGPT Pro (from €103) | GPT-6 Pro | weekly limit, higher as your Pro tier costs more |
| Claude Pro (€18 excluding VAT) | Opus 5.5 | included; Fable 5.1 only via paid usage credits |
| Claude Max (from €90 excluding VAT) | Fable 5.1 | at most 50% of weekly limits |
| Gemini AI Pro (€21.99) | Gemini 3.1 Pro | compute limit per 5 hours plus per week |
The figures come from OpenAI’s help article (updated 6 September 2026), Anthropic’s support page on Fable and Google’s limits explainer.
OpenAI’s cut is the sharpest. Standard Astra gives roughly half the messages per five hours as its predecessor GPT-5.6 Sol: 5 to 45 on Plus instead of 10 to 100, The Decoder reported on 5 September 2026 based on OpenAI’s pricing docs. The help article adds small print the pricing page leaves out: GPT-6 Pro rolls out only to Pro, Business and Enterprise plans, and on Plus, Astra lives only in ChatGPT Work and Codex, not regular chat. Pro 100 and Pro 200 get Astra, called “GPT-6 Pro” in regular ChatGPT. In regular chat, Plus runs on GPT-5.6 Sol; the new GPT-6 Sol and Luna from 22 September land in ChatGPT Work and Codex for Plus users. The same holds for GPT-6.1 Sol, which OpenAI launched on 29 September for Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu: “in ChatGPT Work and Codex”, and “not yet available in Chat”. Via the API it costs $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, same as Claude Sonnet 5.5; read our comparison to see how the two stack up. OpenAI is generous with the context window, meaning how much text the model can hold at once: 256,000 tokens on Plus, 400,000 on Pro (reasoning models).
Anthropic rations just as tightly. Fable 5.1, launched on 1 September 2026, may use up at most half of your weekly limits on Max and on Team Premium seats, and is not included in the Pro subscription: there you pay per use with usage credits, at API rates. What did change on Pro: since 22 September you get Opus 5.5, which according to Anthropic reaches Fable 5.1’s level on most tasks. That brings that level within the regular Pro budget, although Fable itself remains a surcharge. All paid plans marry a five-hour window with a weekly limit; web, desktop, mobile and Claude Code all draw from the same pot. Also, Claude Code’s weekly limits dropped by a net 17 percent on 14 September, Anthropic calculated (via BleepingComputer, 29 August 2026). Why that fits the Fable 5.1 strategy is in our analysis.
Google moved to compute limits on 17 May 2026: no fixed message count, but a meter per five hours plus per week, with heavy features like Deep Research using more. After user pushback, Google eased the limits late May and announced pay-as-you-go credits (9to5Google, 28 May 2026). The flagship in the app is Gemini 3.1 Pro; the fast model is 3.6 Flash (release notes). That is changing per plan: from 9 October you get Flash-Lite only without a subscription, AI Plus keeps Flash-Lite and Flash (Pro disappearing on a date Google will announce by email), and Pro sits only in AI Pro and AI Ultra, which are also getting Deep Think (Google’s help article). On 30 September, Google also introduced Gemini 4 Argon. For now, only a select group of cybersecurity defenders gets access; after that come developers, businesses and consumers “as soon as possible”, starting with paid API customers and Google AI Ultra subscribers. Google names no date.
Three vendors, one motion: the invoice stays flat, the meter tightens, and all three sell or promise extra credits as a spillway. What a plan is worth sits in the small print.
Where each profile ends up
Chat once in a while? Stay free. ChatGPT Free calls text chats “unlimited” within abuse limits, Claude hands you Sonnet 5.5 and Haiku at no cost, Gemini from 9 October gives Flash-Lite only, but with Deep Research. A separate guide covers which other free AI tools are worth your while. Want to pay anyway? Google AI Plus at €4.99 is on paper the sharpest entry, though Pro is disappearing from it soon (full details); ChatGPT Go costs €8 and warns itself about possible ads.
Chat daily? Then you land in the mid-tier of roughly €22 to €23 a month with VAT, where comparing is tricky: OpenAI counts messages, Google counts compute, Claude counts windows and weekly pots. What is certain: at OpenAI, Astra gave you fewer messages for the same money, and on Claude Pro you have had Opus 5.5 since 22 September, while Fable 5.1 costs extra. Keep hitting your ceiling? With VAT, the entry levels of Gemini AI Ultra, ChatGPT Pro and Claude Max cost about the same, between €100 and €109; which one gives you the most usage cannot be derived from the documentation.
Work a lot with documents or code? Claude Pro is the cheapest mid-tier that ships a terminal tool (Claude Code) and Projects, for €15 to €18 excluding VAT; just know that the Claude Code weekly limits dropped on 14 September. At OpenAI, the big context window is the pitch for Plus or Pro.
Live inside Google? This is no contest: AI Plus or AI Pro threads Gemini into Gmail and the rest of Workspace and bundles 400 GB to 5 TB of storage; the other two include no storage. Using Gems in Gemini? Be aware that from November Google is replacing them with Skills, which also work without a subscription; here’s what that means for your Gems.
For a small team (Business runs from 2 to 200 users), OpenAI and Anthropic cost the same, down to the dollar. The gap is at the top: Business Premium literally pledges “5x more usage than standard, with no 5-hour limit”, Claude Enterprise starts at $20 per seat plus usage at API rates. Already paying for Google Workspace? Then you already have Gemini. Also check how each vendor treats your data: training policies split mainly between consumer and business accounts; the full story is in our GDPR guide.
Still: who builds the smartest assistant? Honest answer: these sources cannot prove it, and the numbers shift every few months. This piece needed a full rewrite after less than ten months; less than three weeks later, the models had already changed again; and OpenAI’s AI browser Atlas did not even make it to its first birthday. Whichever tool you choose, learning to work with it well matters more than the brand name, as a two-year trial in law classes showed. What does hold: AI’s price is no longer on your invoice. It is on your meter. Look there first.
