AI Pricing Comparison 2026: What Every Major Provider Actually Charges

AI pricing in 2026 follows a pattern once you see it: almost every provider sells a $20 default, a $100 power tier, and a $200 ceiling. The winners hide in the differences. Google AI Pro at $19.99 bundles the most value, Claude Pro owns coding, Gemini AI Plus at $4.99 is the cheapest paid door, and API rates run from $0.05 to $50 per million tokens. We verified every number on this page against official sources on July 10, 2026, and we re-verify on a fixed schedule.

Each provider below gets the short version: what the money buys, the main catch, and a link to the full breakdown with every tier and rate. The detailed pages carry the same verification date as this one.

Claude: $20 Buys the Best Coding Toolkit

Anthropic's ladder runs Free, Pro at $20 ($17 annual), and Max at $100 or $200. Pro stands out for what it includes at the default price: Claude Code, Cowork, Research, and the Microsoft 365 integration. The API spans Haiku 4.5 at $1/$5 to Fable 5 at $10/$50 per million tokens - the most expensive flagship in the market.

The catch arrived in July: Fable 5 left included plan usage, and subscribers now get $10 or $50 in monthly usage credits instead. Full tiers, API rates, and the credit details are in our Claude pricing breakdown.

ChatGPT: Seven Plans and the Widest Feature Set

OpenAI runs the longest menu: Free, Go at $8, Plus at $20, Pro at $100 or $200, plus Business and Enterprise seats. The $200 Pro carries the biggest toy box - unlimited image generation, 250 deep research runs, and the video stack. GPT-5.6 API rates run $1/$6 (Luna) to $5/$30 (Sol), with GPT-5 nano at $0.05 input for bulk work.

Two catches: the $8 Go plan may include ads, and no individual plan offers annual billing. Every tier and the context-window fine print live in our ChatGPT pricing guide.

Gemini: The Bundle Nobody Else Can Match

Google prices Gemini as part of something bigger: AI Plus at $4.99, AI Pro at $19.99, and AI Ultra at $99.99 or $199.99. Pro bundles 5 TB of storage, YouTube Premium Lite, and the Jules coding agent alongside 4x free-tier usage. Ultra adds Deep Think, Gemini Spark, and 20 TB. The API undercuts itself: Gemini 3.5 Flash at $1.50/$9 beats 3.1 Pro's $2/$12 on both price and benchmarks.

Compute-based usage caps are the catch - opaque by design, refreshing on five-hour cycles. The full plan-by-plan detail is in our Gemini pricing breakdown.

Grok: Two Doors, One Bargain API

xAI sells through X subscriptions ($8 Premium, $40 Premium+) and standalone SuperGrok plans ($10 Lite, $30 full, $300 Heavy). The API is the story: Grok 4.5 at $2/$6 per million tokens prices a frontier model like a mid-tier one, and xAI pays up to $175 a month in credits to developers who share their data.

That data-sharing trade is also the catch. Which door fits which buyer is the whole question, and our Grok pricing guide untangles it.

GitHub Copilot: Credits Changed Everything on June 1

Copilot's stickers held - Free, Pro $10, Pro+ $39, Max $100, Business $19 a seat - but June's switch to metered AI Credits changed what they buy. Completions stay unlimited on paid plans; chat, agents, and code review now draw from monthly credit pools at a cent per credit.

The first metered invoices caused a very public July. Credit math and plan-by-plan detail live in our GitHub Copilot pricing breakdown.

Microsoft Copilot: The Price Is Never the Whole Price

Consumer Copilot chat is free, Microsoft 365 Premium costs $19.99, and business seats run $18 to $30 - always on top of a required Microsoft 365 base license. All-in, a business seat really costs $34 to $43 per user a month. No other vendor structures its headline price that way.

Deadlines matter here: the $18 Business promo ends September 30, and legacy Copilot Pro dies August 1. Details in our Microsoft Copilot pricing guide.

Perplexity: Search-First, From Free to $325

Perplexity matches the standard ladder - Free, Pro $20, Max $200 - and adds a $10 student plan plus enterprise seats at $40 and $325. Model choice is the $20 product: one interface routing to GPT, Claude, Gemini, or Sonar. The Sonar API bakes live web search into token prices from $0.20 per million.

Enterprise Max at $325 a seat is the most expensive subscription in AI. Our Perplexity pricing page covers when it earns that number.

Cursor: The Editor With a Credit Meter

Cursor runs Hobby free, Pro $20, Pro+ $60, Ultra $200, and team seats at $40 or $120 - with 20% off everything on annual billing. "Unlimited" covers tab completions and Auto mode; premium models bill against monthly credit pools that heavy agent use empties fast.

SpaceX's $60 billion acquisition has not touched the price list yet. The credit mechanics are in our Cursor pricing breakdown.

Midjourney: GPU Hours, No Free Tier, No API

Midjourney meters everything in Fast GPU hours across four plans: Basic $10, Standard $30, Pro $60, Mega $120, all 20% cheaper annually. Standard's unlimited Relax mode is the value pick; Pro's Stealth Mode is the commercial-work floor. No free tier and no API exist at any price.

Unused hours expire monthly, which shapes the buying decision more than the stickers do. Full meter math in our Midjourney pricing guide.

Subscriptions vs API: Which Way to Pay

The rule of thumb: chat daily, subscribe; build products, meter. A $20 subscription buys far more tokens than $20 of API credit for interactive use, because flat rates subsidize heavy chat users. APIs win the moment software - not a human - drives the volume, since you pay only for what runs.

Power users increasingly do both: one subscription for daily work, one API key for automation. Budget both lines separately - the subscription is fixed cost, the API line grows with usage, and conflating them is how AI budgets blow up. Our AI API pricing comparison puts every provider's token rates in one table.

The Three Patterns Behind Every Price on This Page

AI pricing standardized in 2026, and three patterns explain most of it. First, the ladder: $20 default, $100 for roughly 5x, $200 for 20x. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Perplexity, and Cursor all sell it, which makes tier-for-tier comparison easy and genuine differentiation rare - the labs watch each other's price pages more closely than any customer does.

Second, credit-ization. Fable 5 credits, GitHub's AI Credits, Cursor's pools, Google's purchasable AI credits - flat "unlimited" plans are quietly becoming metered ones. Expect more of this, not less, as frontier compute costs rise.

Third, bundling. Google attaches storage and YouTube, Microsoft attaches Office, xAI attaches a social network. When the models converge, the bundle is what's left to compete on - and it is why the "best" plan increasingly depends on which company's products you already use.

How We Track These Prices

AI pricing changes monthly, so this page runs on a maintenance schedule, not a publish date. Every number is checked against the provider's official pricing page. The "Updated" date at the top of this article is the day of the latest verification, and each linked provider page carries its own. When a price changes between passes - a model launch, a billing overhaul, a promo expiry - we update the affected page the same week the news breaks.

Spot an outdated number? The date tells you how stale it could be, and the provider links above always show the current official source.

Two more guides round out this series. Deciding between the two biggest names? Our ChatGPT vs Claude pricing comparison settles it tier by tier. Not ready to pay at all? The free AI tools guide ranks what every provider gives away at $0.