Grok vs ChatGPT vs Claude 2026: plans from $8 to $500, models and limits
Updated: Nov 5
Updated: November 5, 2026
ChatGPT, Claude and Grok all have a free tier, and the cheapest paid access starts at $8 a month for ChatGPT Go and for the Plus tier of The X Subscription, while Claude's first paid plan, Pro, costs $20 a month. At the top end, ChatGPT Pro goes up to $500 a month, while Claude Ultra and X Ultra stop at $200. The three services differ more in what each tier includes than in headline price: OpenAI sells reasoning context and Codex time, Anthropic sells usage multipliers and access to its Fable model, and SpaceXSI (the company behind Grok, which the x.ai site now names SpaceX Super Intelligence) bundles Grok with X Premium features and Cursor coding usage.
All prices and plan details below were checked on the official pricing pages and help documentation of OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceXSI on November 5, 2026. Where a company does not publish a figure, such as a numeric message cap, the guide says so instead of estimating it.
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Tier | ChatGPT | Claude | Grok |
Free | $0, GPT-6 Luna | $0, Sonnet and Haiku | $0, limits not published |
Entry paid | Go, $8/month | Pro, $20/month ($200/year) | X Subscription Plus, $8/month |
Main paid | Plus, $20/month | Pro, $20/month | SuperGrok or X Premium, $30/month |
Heavy use | Pro, $100, $200 or $500/month | Max $100, Ultra $200/month | X Super $100, X Ultra $200/month |
Teams | Business, $20/user/month yearly, $25 monthly | Team Standard, $20/seat yearly, $25 monthly | Grok Business, $30/user/month |
Large organizations | Enterprise, contact sales | Enterprise, $20/seat yearly plus usage, 20 seats minimum | Enterprise, contact sales |
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GROK VS CHATGPT VS CLAUDE: WHICH ONE TO PICK IN 2026.
For a reader who wants one assistant for writing, research and everyday questions, the decision usually comes down to the $20 to $30 tier. ChatGPT Plus at $20 gives the widest model menu, with GPT-6.1 Sol, GPT-6 Astra, GPT-6 Sol, GPT-6 Luna and several GPT-5.6 models, plus projects, scheduled tasks, custom GPTs and expanded Codex. Claude Pro at $20 includes Opus, Sonnet and Haiku, Claude Code, Research, Claude in Chrome and the Microsoft 365 integration, and it is the only one of the three whose pricing page lists a yearly price for an individual plan ($200 paid up front). SuperGrok at $30, or the equivalent Premium tier of The X Subscription at the same price, adds image and video generation, the Expert mode and connectors, with real-time search across the web and X.
The heavy-use tiers serve different people. ChatGPT Pro is aimed at long reasoning sessions and Codex, with a 400K reasoning context window and an Ultrafast mode on the $500 tier. Claude Max and Ultra raise the usage allowance by 5x and 10x over Pro and include monthly API credits equal to the subscription price. X Super and X Ultra raise Grok and Cursor usage by 15x and 50x over the Plus tier, which makes them most relevant to people who also code with Cursor.
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CHATGPT PLANS AND MODELS IN NOVEMBER 2026.
OpenAI lists six ChatGPT plans. Free runs on GPT-6 Luna and GPT-5 Thinking Mini, with text chats that OpenAI describes as unlimited "subject to abuse guardrails" and limited image generation, voice, deep research and memory. Go, at $8 a month, keeps the same models but expands messages, uploads, images and voice, and OpenAI states that it may include ads. Plus, at $20 a month, adds the GPT-6 and GPT-5.6 families (GPT-5.6 Sol Pro excluded) and a 256K reasoning context window, which OpenAI equates to roughly 320 pages of input.
Pro starts at $100 a month and is sold in three tiers at $100, $200 and $500. It adds GPT-5.6 Sol Pro, unlimited use of GPT-5.6 Sol, Terra and Luna, expanded GPT-6 usage, a 400K reasoning context window (about 680 pages), maximum deep research and memory, and monthly API credits whose amount the pricing page does not state. For teams, Business costs $20 per user per month billed yearly or $25 billed monthly, with a minimum of two users, and Enterprise is sold through sales with annual billing.
OpenAI's pricing documentation also states that ChatGPT Work and Codex share one usage pool. For Plus, it gives estimates rather than fixed caps, for example 15 to 160 local messages every five hours with GPT-6.1 Sol and 350 to 3,000 with GPT-6 Luna, and warns that weekly limits may apply as well. Our guide to ChatGPT usage limits covers the caps tool by tool.
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CLAUDE PLANS AND MODELS IN NOVEMBER 2026.
Anthropic's current model lineup is Claude Fable 5.1, Claude Opus 5.5, Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Claude Haiku 5.5, all with a 1M-token context window and 128K-token maximum output on the API. In the Claude apps, Free gives access to Sonnet and Haiku, with web search, file creation, code execution, memory, Artifacts and up to five projects, under limits that reset every five hours and weekly.
Pro costs $20 a month, or $17 a month when paid yearly ($200 up front), and adds Opus, Claude Code, Research, Claude in Chrome, scheduled tasks and Microsoft 365. Fable is available on Pro only through paid usage credits. Max ($100 a month) gives five times Pro's usage, both per five-hour window and weekly, while Ultra ($200 a month) gives ten times Pro's weekly usage and removes the five-hour limit for verified accounts. Both let subscribers spend up to half of their weekly allowance on Fable and include API credits equal to the plan price.
Team runs from 2 to 150 seats. A Standard seat costs $20 a month billed yearly or $25 monthly, and a Premium seat costs $100 yearly or $125 monthly with five times the usage of a Standard seat. Enterprise starts at $20 per seat per month on a yearly contract with a 20-seat minimum, plus usage billed at API rates. The full breakdown is in our guide to Claude plans and usage limits.
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GROK PLANS AND THE X SUBSCRIPTION IN NOVEMBER 2026.
Grok is sold in two overlapping ways. The standalone pricing page lists Free and SuperGrok at $30 a month, along with SuperGrok Lite, SuperGrok Heavy, Business and Enterprise columns whose prices it does not show. Free includes real-time web and X search, voice mode and connectors within limits that SpaceXSI calls "generous" but does not quantify. SuperGrok adds higher rate limits, Expert mode and image and video generation through Grok Imagine.
Since its announcement on October 12, 2026, SpaceXSI also sells The X Subscription, which bundles Grok, Cursor coding agents and X features. Its tiers are Free, Plus at $8, Premium at $30, Super at $100 and Ultra at $200 a month. Premium includes the benefits of SuperGrok, Cursor Pro and X Premium+, which the company says previously cost $90 a month combined, and the higher tiers multiply usage by 4x (Premium), 15x (Super) and 50x (Ultra) relative to Plus. Existing SuperGrok subscribers can keep their plan or switch with a prorated refund.
Paid Grok plans draw from a single weekly usage allowance, with extra usage credits available beyond it. For organizations, Grok Business costs $30 per user per month, and Grok Enterprise adds SSO, SCIM directory sync and stronger audit controls at a price set by sales. Our Grok pricing guide lists every tier in detail.
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USAGE LIMITS IN GROK, CHATGPT AND CLAUDE COMPARED.
None of the three companies publishes a simple message count for its consumer apps. Each one describes limits as a relative allowance that depends on the model, the length of the conversation and the tools used, so the most reliable comparison is between the multipliers each company states.
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Limit | ChatGPT | Claude | Grok |
Free tier | Text chats "unlimited" within abuse guardrails | Resets every 5 hours and weekly | "Generous limits", no figures |
Reset model | 5-hour estimates, weekly limits may apply | 5-hour window plus weekly cap | Single weekly allowance |
Heavy tiers | Pro has no 5-hour limit at present | Max 5x, Ultra 10x Pro | Super 15x, Ultra 50x Plus |
Shared pools | ChatGPT Work and Codex share usage | Limits depend on model, chat length and file size | Grok and Cursor share the X Subscription pool |
Extra usage | Credits for Business and Enterprise | Usage credits on paid plans | Extra usage credits |
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The reasoning context window is also a plan feature in ChatGPT, which publishes 256K tokens for Plus and 400K for Pro. Anthropic publishes a 1M-token context window for its current models on the API, and Grok's app pages do not state a context figure for each plan.
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WHAT A YEAR OF GROK, CHATGPT OR CLAUDE COSTS.
Yearly totals make the gaps between tiers easier to see, especially for teams. The figures below multiply the published monthly prices by twelve, except where a company publishes a yearly price, and exclude taxes.
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Scenario | ChatGPT | Claude | Grok |
One user, entry paid tier | Go: $96 | Pro yearly: $200 | X Plus: $96 |
One user, main tier | Plus: $240 | Pro monthly: $240 | SuperGrok or X Premium: $360 |
One user, top tier | Pro $500: $6,000 | Ultra: $2,400 | X Ultra: $2,400 |
Team of 10, yearly billing | Business: $2,400 | Team Standard: $2,400 | Grok Business: $3,600 |
Team of 10, monthly billing | Business: $3,000 | Team Standard: $3,000 | Grok Business: $3,600 |
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For a single user, Claude Pro paid yearly costs $40 less than twelve months of ChatGPT Plus, and ChatGPT Go and X Plus are the cheapest paid tiers overall at $96 a year. For a ten-person team, ChatGPT Business and Claude Team Standard cost the same $2,400 a year on yearly billing, while Grok Business costs $1,200 more at the published per-user price.
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HOW TO CHECK YOUR CURRENT PLAN AND USAGE.
Each service shows the live allowance in its own settings, and those numbers are the ones that apply to an account on a given day. OpenAI's pricing documentation points Pro users to the usage dashboard for current limits, since the Pro tiers have no five-hour limit at present. Anthropic states that Claude limits depend on the model, the length of the chat and the size of attached files, and that paid plans can use usage credits once a limit is reached. Grok users can check current prices and their usage in the grok.com dashboard, and SuperGrok subscribers see the option to move to The X Subscription in their billing settings once it is offered to them.
Before upgrading, it helps to compare the free tier of each assistant on the same three or four real tasks, such as summarizing a long PDF, drafting an email and checking a recent news item. The results show quickly which model style fits the work, and the paid tier can then be chosen on the basis of usage rather than brand.
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GROK, CHATGPT AND CLAUDE IN 2026: WHERE THE PLANS DIFFER.
The published facts point to three distinct offers. ChatGPT shares the lowest entry price with X Plus (Go at $8) and has the most expensive individual tier at $500, with long reasoning context and Codex as the main reasons to pay more. Claude matches ChatGPT at $20, adds a yearly discount, and ties its higher tiers to explicit 5x and 10x usage multipliers and to access to Fable 5.1. Grok costs more at the main tier ($30) but bundles X Premium+ and Cursor usage, which changes the value for people already on X or coding with Cursor.
The open points are the same for all three: none publishes fixed message counts for its apps, OpenAI does not show the API credit amount included in Pro, and SpaceXSI does not list prices for SuperGrok Lite and SuperGrok Heavy on its pricing page. Readers comparing specific models rather than plans can turn to our GPT-6.1 Terra vs Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Grok 4.7 API comparison.
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