AI Chatbot Pricing Index: March 2026
Chatbot pricing has shifted more in the past six months than in the two years before it. OpenAI added a plan tier between free and Plus. Anthropic split its premium offering into two separate tiers. Google renamed its product and introduced a $249.99/month ceiling. Perplexity cut a key feature limit without announcement. This index tracks where prices stand across nine platforms, with notes on what changed.
The Data
| Chatbot | Free Tier | Mid (~$20/mo) | Premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | GPT-5.2, image gen, voice | Go $8/mo • Plus $20/mo | Pro $200/mo |
| Claude | Sonnet 4.5, Projects | Pro $20/mo | Max 5x $100/mo • Max 20x $200/mo |
| Gemini | Limited | AI Pro $19.99/mo | AI Ultra $249.99/mo |
| Perplexity | Basic search | Pro $20/mo ($17 annual) | Max $200/mo |
| Grok | Limited via X | SuperGrok $30/mo | Enterprise (custom) |
| Le Chat (Mistral) | Full chat access | Pro $14.99/mo | API pay-as-you-go |
| Microsoft Copilot | Included with M365 | Pro $20/mo | Business $18–21/user/mo |
| GitHub Copilot | 2,000 completions/50 chats | Pro $10/mo | Pro+ $39/mo • Enterprise $39/user/mo |
| DeepSeek | 5M free tokens | API only: ~$0.28/$0.42/1M tokens | Enterprise (custom) |
What Changed in March
ChatGPT Go is now a global product. OpenAI piloted an $8/month plan in India starting August 2025 and expanded it to the US and 170 countries in January 2026. Go sits between the free tier and Plus: unlimited chats with GPT-5.2 Instant, higher file upload limits, expanded image generation, and more memory than free. The trade-off is advertising -- Go will carry ads that ChatGPT says will be labeled and separated from responses. Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise remain ad-free. The practical consequence: OpenAI is building two tiers of experience. Ad-supported at the bottom, paid and uninterrupted above it.
Anthropic added a $100 tier and clarified what Max actually gets you. Claude's current pricing is Free, Pro ($20/month), Max 5x ($100/month), and Max 20x ($200/month). Both Max plans include Opus 4.6, which launched February 5 with a 1 million token context window (beta), agent teams for parallel coding workflows, and an 80.9% score on SWE-bench Verified -- currently the top benchmark result for coding. For Claude Code users specifically: Max 5x provides roughly 5-8 hours per week with Opus 4.6, Max 20x provides 24-40 hours. Pro at $20 covers Sonnet 4.5 and does not include Opus access.
Google rebranded Gemini Advanced and added an Ultra tier. What was called "Gemini Advanced" is now "Google AI Pro" at $19.99/month. The new ceiling is "Google AI Ultra" at $249.99/month -- the highest-priced consumer AI subscription currently available. AI Pro retains one underappreciated advantage for Google Workspace users: the plan includes 2TB of Google One storage. If you already pay $10/month for Google storage, the effective AI cost is approximately $10/month. The context window advantage remains unchanged: Gemini's is roughly five times larger than ChatGPT's, making it the practical choice for document-heavy work.
Perplexity's Deep Research limits dropped without notice. Pro subscribers expecting 600 deep research queries per day found them cut to 20 per month. Perplexity attributed the change to backend infrastructure and has partially restored limits since. The episode is relevant to anyone comparing research tools: what a subscription guarantees at signup is not always what it delivers month to month.
Context on Where Prices Are
Free tiers are more capable than they were a year ago. ChatGPT, Claude, and DeepSeek all offer their standard models to free users with usage caps rather than feature restrictions. DeepSeek gives new accounts 5 million tokens without a credit card. The gap between free and the $20/month tier is narrower now than it was twelve months ago.
The $20/month tier has converged across the major platforms. ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro, Gemini AI Pro, and Perplexity Pro all land at $19.99-$20/month with broadly similar feature sets. The below-market options are Le Chat Pro ($14.99) and GitHub Copilot Pro ($10) -- both strong value in their respective categories.
At the top end, pricing is diverging rather than converging. Google AI Ultra ($249.99) is a significant outlier. Claude Max 20x ($200) and ChatGPT Pro ($200) serve different power-user profiles -- heavy agentic coding vs. unlimited reasoning model access. These are specialist tiers; the value calculation only works at high usage volumes.
Notes on Use Case Fit
Coding: GitHub Copilot Pro at $10/month remains the most cost-effective entry for AI-assisted development. It's free through the GitHub Student Developer Pack and for eligible open-source maintainers. Pro+ at $39/month adds Copilot Workspace and expanded premium model access.
Research: Perplexity Pro's deep research queries are its clearest differentiator -- when the limits reflect what's advertised. The March limit reduction is relevant context for subscription decisions.
Long documents: Gemini AI Pro's context window is the practical choice for large-file analysis. Claude Opus 4.6's 1 million token window is technically larger but currently in beta and restricted to Max subscribers.
General use: The free tiers of ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini cover most everyday tasks. Consistently hitting message limits is the clearest signal to upgrade to a $20/month tier.
Full profiles for each chatbot in this index -- including feature summaries, use case ratings, and model details -- are at chatbot.gallery. For recommendations organized by use case rather than price, see the best AI chatbots guide.
Pricing verified against official sources as of March 15, 2026. This index is updated monthly.