AI chatbot plan prices and free plans, October 2026
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Ten chatbots are covered here: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, Mistral, DeepSeek, Llama, Poe and Pi. Prices below were read from each vendor's own page on 15 October 2026. If you want a model-by-model comparison of ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, our three-way comparison covers it.
Of the plans with a readable price, the cheapest is Google AI Plus at $4.99 a month, then ChatGPT Go at $8, which the page says may include ads. Mistral Pro is $14.99. Claude Pro and Perplexity Pro are both $17 a month on annual billing, and Google AI Pro and ChatGPT Plus are $19.99 and $20. The top individual plans start at $100 at ChatGPT and Claude and at $99.99 at Gemini.
Prices and plan details checked on October 15, 2026.
On this page
Plan prices at five assistants
Assistant
Free
Entry plan
Standard plan
Top plan
ChatGPT
$0
Go, $8 (may include ads)
Plus, $20
Pro, from $100, in three usage tiers
Claude
$0
None listed
Pro, $17 on annual billing ($200 up front), $20 monthly
Max, from $100
Gemini
$0
Google AI Plus, $4.99
Google AI Pro, $19.99
Google AI Ultra, $99.99 or $199.99
Perplexity
Yes
None listed
Pro, $17 on annual billing
Max, $167 on annual billing
Mistral
$0
None listed
Pro, $14.99
None listed
Individual plans in US dollars a month, from each vendor's pricing page, checked 15 October 2026. Grok's plans page lists SuperGrok and SuperGrok Heavy but showed us no prices, so Grok is not in this table. Mistral's Team plan is $24.99 per user a month.
What the usage multipliers mean
Each vendor describes the higher tiers as a multiple of a lower one. The base allowance differs by vendor, so the multiples do not compare across rows.
Vendor
What the page says
Google
AI Plus gives 2x the usage of Free and AI Pro 4x. AI Ultra is 5x the AI Pro limits at $99.99 or 20x at $199.99.
Anthropic
Max lets you choose 5x or 20x more usage than Pro, from $100 a month.
OpenAI
Pro offers a choice of three usage tiers from $100 a month. Plus lists expanded, not fixed, limits.
Higher-tier usage as each vendor words it, from the pages checked on 15 October 2026.
What the free plans include
Assistant
Free plan includes
ChatGPT
Unlimited text chats (subject to abuse guardrails), plus limited uploads, image creation, voice chats, deep research, Codex access and memory.
Claude
Chat on web, desktop and mobile, web search, file creation and code execution, memory across conversations, connected apps and Artifacts.
Gemini
The Flash-Lite model, image generation and editing, Deep Research, Gemini Live, Canvas and Gems, with 15 GB of storage.
Mistral
Limited messages and web searches, limited coding sessions, basic image generation and editing, and 100+ connectors.
Free-plan features as listed on each vendor's page, checked 15 October 2026.
Perplexity lists a free plan too, but its pricing page describes only what Pro adds to it, so we leave its free limits out.
API prices and open weights
DeepSeek sells API access priced per million tokens, at half rate outside peak hours. Llama is a downloadable model, so it has no plan price.
Model
Input, cache miss (off-peak / peak)
Output (off-peak / peak)
deepseek-flash
$0.15 / $0.30
$0.60 / $1.20
deepseek-v4-pro
$0.66 / $1.32
$1.98 / $3.96
DeepSeek API prices per 1M tokens, from its pricing page (no date on the page; the change log's latest price change came with the 10 September 2026 V4.1-Flash release), checked 15 October 2026. Peak hours are 01:00 to 04:00 and 06:00 to 10:00 UTC, Monday to Friday, excluding Chinese public holidays. Cache hits cost less.
Meta's Llama 4 Community License grants a royalty-free licence to use, copy and modify the models. A company whose products had more than 700 million monthly active users when the Llama 4 version was released must ask Meta for a licence, which Meta may refuse.
Poe sells access to many vendors' models in one app; its sign-in page lists GPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Kimi and Mistral models. We did not find a Poe price on a page we could read, and Pi lists none either.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best free AI chatbot?
ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Mistral each have a free plan, and Perplexity lists one. ChatGPT's free plan offers unlimited text chats subject to abuse guardrails, Claude's includes web search and code execution, and Gemini's includes image generation and Deep Research.
What is the cheapest paid AI chatbot plan?
Of the plans we could read, Google AI Plus at $4.99 a month, then ChatGPT Go at $8 and Mistral Pro at $14.99. Claude Pro and Perplexity Pro are $17 a month on annual billing. Gemini's AI Pro is $19.99 and ChatGPT Plus is $20.
Does ChatGPT Go show ads?
OpenAI's pricing page says the Go plan may include ads.
Is DeepSeek cheaper than ChatGPT?
DeepSeek's API charges per million tokens, from $0.15 for input on its flash model off-peak. ChatGPT's paid plans are monthly, from $8. The two are billed differently, so there is no like-for-like price.
