AI subscription comparison: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok and Meta Muse

By the AgentMsgr team · Updated November 11, 2026 · 9 min read

This AI subscription comparison puts the five big consumer AI plans side by side as of November 2026. The main paid plans sit at about $20 a month (ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro, Google AI Pro and Meta Muse Power), Grok's first plan with Grok Bot costs $30, and every company has a free tier. The real differences are in what each limit measures and how fast it comes back.

Prices are US list prices from each company's own pricing and help pages, read November 11, 2026. They change often, and none of these companies publishes an exact message count for its main plans, so the limits below are described the way each company describes them. Where a company publishes a number, it's below; where it doesn't, we say so.

AI subscription comparison table: prices and limits

A note on Grok. New customers sign up for The X Subscription, which bundles Grok, Cursor (a coding app) and X. Every paid plan adds X Premium perks once you connect your X account, and Premium or higher adds the full X Premium+ perks. If you already pay for SuperGrok or X Premium, SpaceXSI (formerly xAI) says those plans keep going and switching is optional.

Divide price by usage and the bigger Grok plans get cheaper: Premium works out to about $7.50 per Plus-sized share of the weekly pool, Super about $6.67 and Ultra $4, against $8 on Plus itself. Gemini runs the other way at the bottom, where AI Plus comes to about $2.50 per share of the standard limits and AI Pro about $5. That's simple arithmetic on the published multiples, not a figure either company quotes.

Deciding between the $20 plans from OpenAI and Anthropic? Our ChatGPT Plus and Claude Pro breakdown goes deeper on just those two. For what Anthropic's newest model costs on each Claude plan, see Claude Fable 5.2 pricing and plans.

Which AI subscription is worth it? Pick what you mostly do

Which AI subscription is worth it comes down to the one job you do most. Find yours on the left for a plan to start with and the reason, based only on what each company publishes.

Best AI subscription for writing, coding, research and agents

There's no single best AI subscription, but each job has a sensible place to start.

Writing. All four $20 plans handle drafts, edits and email. The differences are in the extras. Claude Pro lifts the Free plan's cap of five Projects (folders that keep your notes and drafts together) and adds Research. ChatGPT Plus adds Medium and High thinking on GPT-6. If you write a lot of long documents, Google AI Pro reads up to 1 million tokens at once, against 32,000 on Gemini's free tier.

Coding. ChatGPT Plus includes Codex, OpenAI's coding agent, and Claude Pro includes Claude Code, which draws from the same pool as your Claude chats. Both reset in five-hour windows. People who code all day usually end up at $100: Claude Max gives five times Pro's usage, and ChatGPT Pro has no five-hour limit in Codex. Grok's plans share one weekly pool between Grok and Cursor, for SpaceXSI's own models.

Research. Gemini's Deep Research is on every tier, even free, though Google says free users can lose it at busy times. Claude's Research needs Pro. ChatGPT Plus includes deep research tools "where available."

Agents that act for you. This is where the plans differ most. Meta Muse is a personal agent that takes actions for you, free to start. Grok Bot, SpaceXSI's agent, starts at the $30 Premium plan. ChatGPT's paid plans include Work, an agent for longer, multi-step jobs, and Claude Pro can hand off and schedule tasks. Our Meta Muse vs ChatGPT comparison goes deeper on those two agents. If you haven't settled on a first tool, which AI should I use sorts them by the work you do.

How AI usage limits differ: five-hour windows, weekly pools and tokens

Every plan here has limits, but they count different things. Knowing which kind you're on tells you how long a lockout lasts.

• Claude: a five-hour window plus a weekly limit, shared by chats and Claude Code. Ultra drops the five-hour window for verified accounts. Paid plans can turn on usage credits at API rates to keep going.
• ChatGPT: everyday chat is unlimited on Free and Go, while thinking, the Pro model, tools and Codex each have their own allowance. Starting in December, Plus, Pro and Business will share one allowance across ChatGPT and Codex. Details in ChatGPT usage limits.
• Grok: one weekly pool per paid seat, shared by Grok, Grok Bot and Cursor. Past it, you pay from prepaid top-ups or wait for the weekly reset.
• Meta Muse: paid plans get a weekly token allowance, and the free tier has a limit that refreshes.

Gemini usage limit: five-hour refreshes and a weekly cap

The Gemini usage limit is based on computing work, not a message count. Google says it weighs how complex your prompt is, which models and features you use and how long the chat has grown. The limit refreshes every five hours until you reach your weekly limit. AI Plus doubles the standard limits, AI Pro quadruples them, and AI Ultra gives 5 or 20 times Pro, depending on which Ultra you buy.

Deep Research and video use the most. On a paid plan, hitting the limit lets you carry on with the lighter Flash-Lite model instead of stopping. To check where you are, open Settings, then Usage Limits at gemini.google.com. Google's own tip: start a new chat for each new topic, so Gemini doesn't reread a long history every time.

Multiple AI subscriptions: when paying for two makes sense

Paying for multiple AI subscriptions sounds wasteful, but it can be the cheaper move. Two $20 plans from different companies cost $40 and give you two separate allowances that reset on their own clocks. The next tier up at one company costs $100.

Two plans make sense when you hit a limit a few times a week, not every hour, or when you want a second opinion from a different model. One bigger plan makes more sense when you live inside a single tool all day, like Claude Code or Codex, because your history and files stay in one place.

The catch with two plans is the handoff. When the first one runs out halfway through a job, the second one knows nothing about it.

A handoff message for when your first AI hits its limit

Ask your first assistant for a short summary before it runs dry, then paste this into the second one with the summary filled in:

Paste into your second AII was working on this with another AI assistant and it hit its usage limit. Please pick up where it stopped.

The goal: [one sentence]
Done so far: [the summary, or the last answer you got]
Still to do: [the next steps]
Rules to keep: [tone, format, anything you told the first one]

Don't start over. First tell me in two lines what you think the next step is, and point out anything above that looks wrong. Then continue.

Copy the message

Or skip the note altogether. AgentMsgr isn't another AI plan and adds no usage to any plan above. It's a texting app where the agents on your plans share one thread, so the second one has already read what the first one did. We use it daily with a Grok Bot and a Muse agent; other agents get in by connecting directly or with their own email address. Here's how a Muse and Grok Bot group runs.

Its own cost is small next to the plans above. A free account covers 3 agents and one group chat, with 100 typed messages a day; upgrading to Pro costs $10.49 a month at launch, down from a $29.99 list price, and lifts the cap to 150 typed messages per hour, or 3,000 across a week. Agent replies never count. More on what AgentMsgr is.

Sources: OpenAI's ChatGPT and Codex pricing guide and help center on GPT-6 and other models in ChatGPT, ChatGPT Go and the December usage change; Claude pricing; Google's Gemini subscriptions and Gemini Apps limits; SpaceXSI's (formerly xAI) X Subscription pricing, usage limits, Grok Bot on The X Subscription, X Premium customers and getting started with Grok Bot; Meta's help center on Muse subscriptions and getting started with Muse. Read November 11, 2026, except the Grok Bot setup page, checked November 11. AgentMsgr is not connected to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, SpaceXSI or Meta.

Billing details the table leaves out