ChatGPT Plus vs Claude Pro vs Gemini Advanced

There are two complications with this comparison. Gemini Advanced is no longer a tier Google sells under that name: Google retired the name in May 2025 and moved its benefits into Google AI Pro, so AI Pro is what gets compared here. And all three vendors state a price far more precisely than they state what the price buys.

No price on this page comes from a round-up or a press report. Every figure was served by the vendor's own site on 2 October 2026, with the billing period named. Where a vendor serves euro to a browser in Belgium, euro is what appears here, with no conversion applied.

Each entry runs the same five lines: price, what the money buys, what it does not cover, who it suits, verdict. After the three entries comes the part these comparisons skip, which is when paying for two of them is correct and when it is a subscription nobody has looked at since March.

ChatGPT Plus

Price. openai.com/chatgpt/pricing served this on 2 October 2026: Free at $0 a month, Go at $8, Plus at $20, and Pro from $100, each figure printed beside its tier name and a "/ month" line. That page returns HTTP 403 to our direct request, so we read the text rendering a browser is given. A reader who opens the link sees the same four figures.

What the money buys. An updated GPT-5.6 Sol with a thinking slider, reported on 6 August 2026, and an interface with no advertising in it. GPT-5.6 Sol is still the Chat tab's model: GPT-6 Sol, GPT-6 Luna and, since 29 September, GPT-6.1 Sol reach Plus only in ChatGPT Work and Codex, and OpenAI's own launch posts say they are "not yet available in Chat". The second half of that has quietly become the bigger half. OpenAI's own pricing page prints "This plan may include ads" on the Go card, so that much comes from the company. Ads run for logged-in Free and Go users only, they reached all 27 EU member states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland on 24 August 2026 (reported by EU Perspectives and Digiday), and OpenAI said on 31 August that the ad business had passed a $1 billion annualised run rate (reported by Forbes and Adweek). Paying is how you leave that.

What it does not cover. Text volume, which has stopped being a reason to upgrade at all. OpenAI removed text message limits on every ChatGPT tier on 6 August 2026, with Free and Go getting unlimited text chats, reported by TechCrunch the same day. Files, image uploads, voice and image generation stay metered separately, and the pricing page sizes them in words rather than numbers: limited on Free, more on Go, expanded on Plus.

Who it suits. Someone who wants the default that everyone else is also using, and who would rather not read sponsored units between paragraphs. If your week is mostly typing questions and reading answers, the free tier now does more of that than it did in July.

Verdict. The most explicit of the three ladders, four rungs with a figure on each, and the only one of the three whose pricing page warns that a paid tier may carry advertising.

Claude Pro

Price. claude.com/pricing served this on 2 October 2026, quoted exactly: "$17 Per month with annual subscription discount ($200 billed up front). $20 if billed monthly." Max sits above it at "From $100 Per month".

What the money buys. Everything Anthropic says on that page about the size of Pro is the phrase "More usage*", asterisk included. Max's line is "Choose 5x or 20x more usage than Pro*". The footnote both of them point at reads "Usage limits apply." The plan cards carry no message count and no token figure, and the FAQ underneath answers in multiples rather than counts: Pro is at least 5x Free per session, Max is 5x or 20x Pro. A multiple of an unstated quantity is still unstated. On 22 September Anthropic said it was "increasing five-hour usage limits on Pro, Max, and Team plans" and gave subscribers a single limit reset to use whenever they choose, again without a number.

What it does not cover. Anthropic's newest model line, on this tier. Claude Fable 5.1 shipped on 1 September 2026, and the help centre says Fable 5 and Fable 5.1 are "available on all paid plans (Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise)". The paragraph after that is the one to read: on Pro and standard Team seats those models "aren't included in your plan's usage limits. You can use them with usage credits." Max and premium seats can spend "up to 50% of your weekly usage limits on Fable models at no extra cost". So the $17 to $20 plan lists the newest models as available and bills them separately, while the $100 tier is where they come out of the allowance you already bought.

Who it suits. Someone doing long, careful work in one place, who is comfortable buying a plan whose size nobody has stated. Anthropic asks for more trust than the other two and hands back more detail about how the meter behaves.

Verdict. Precise about mechanism, silent about quantity, and now the one plan of the three where a flagship model can sit outside the thing you are paying for.

Google AI Pro

Price. gemini.google/subscriptions served euro figures to a browser in Belgium on 2 October 2026: Google AI Pro at €21.99 a month, AI Plus at €4.99 a month, AI Ultra from €99.99 a month with a €219.99 option above it, and the free tier at €0 with a Google account. Google geo-serves that page, so those are the numbers a Belgian reader is shown rather than a converted dollar price; a US visitor sees AI Pro at $19.99. No tier called Gemini Advanced appears anywhere on it. The plans listed on 2 October 2026 were Free, AI Plus, AI Pro and AI Ultra.

What the money buys. Placement, mostly. AI Pro puts Gemini inside Gmail, Docs and the other Google apps already open in your tabs, adds storage, and unlocks Gemini Spark, the agent, which Google restricts to the Pro and Ultra tiers. It also brings 3.8 Flash, Google's newest Flash model, which the free tier does not get.

What it does not cover. One gap is regional and one is arithmetical. Google's support page for Spark says it is "Available wherever Gemini Apps are supported, except in the European Economic Area, Nigeria, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom", so a European subscriber buys a tier containing something they cannot open. That exclusion attaches to the agent, and to no Gemini model. The arithmetical gap is the headline multiplier. On one.google.com on 2 October, which served us German, the marketing line about up to 20x access carries an asterisk footnoted to a comparison with "people without a Google AI subscription", while the comparison table further down the same page reads "20 times higher limits than the Pro plan". gemini.google/subscriptions puts the 5x and 20x against AI Pro. Twenty times free and twenty times Pro are different purchases, and Google has not reconciled its own two answers.

Who it suits. Someone whose mail, documents and phone are already Google's, living somewhere Spark works. On Android the integration reaches places a third party is not allowed to reach.

Verdict. The easiest price of the three to verify and the hardest headline number to interpret, and the only one that sells a feature by geography.

When the second subscription is the right call

Four situations where two plans genuinely earn their money.

Your week has a hard split. Long drafting in one place and everything else in another is a real division of labour, and it is the split most likely to still make sense in a year.
Somebody else is paying for one of them. A work Workspace seat that already includes AI Pro changes the arithmetic completely. The personal subscription then covers whatever the work account should not see.
You hit a ceiling on a named day, most weeks. Then a second plan is worth pricing against the next tier up on the first one. That test only counts if you have actually hit the ceiling, rather than arranged your week around fear of it.
One feature exists in exactly one of them. Video files, a particular agent, a keyboard integration. A single thing you use every week and cannot get anywhere else is a sufficient reason on its own.

Inertia, and how to spot it

You bought it for a model that has since been retired or renamed. Check what you are being served today before the next renewal.
You keep it as an outage backup. A status page and a free account cover that without a direct debit.
The limit that drove you to it has moved. ChatGPT's text caps went away on 6 August. If the second plan was a volume workaround, the thing it worked around may no longer exist.
You cannot name the last thing you did in it. The strongest signal on the list, and the one that takes ten seconds to check.

The disclosure

We sell a subscription too, so weigh this bit accordingly. MultiChats puts 60 models from 18 providers behind one login, Anthropic's, OpenAI's and Google's among them, 21 of them usable without paying. Pro is $20.99 a month or $199.99 a year, Pro+ is $34.99 a month or $349.99 a year, and the plans sit in the pricing section. Free accounts get 50 messages every 24 hours.

That is not an argument for cancelling anything above. If one vendor's plan already covers your week, keeping it is the simpler decision, and the three entries above should tell you which one that is.

What the three ladders share is a confident price and a vague size. All three print a monthly figure, and not one of them prints how much use it buys. Anthropic and Google describe usage as a multiple of some other plan, and OpenAI's rungs read limited, more and expanded without ever saying more than what. Anything more specific you read about these plans this month is somebody's estimate wearing a table.

Prices read on 2 October 2026 from openai.com/chatgpt/pricing, claude.com/pricing and gemini.google/subscriptions. Google's figures were served in euro to a browser in Belgium, and OpenAI's and Anthropic's in dollars. OpenAI's page returns 403 to a direct request, so its figures were read from the text rendering a browser is served. Anthropic's Fable wording comes from the Claude help centre, and the Gemini Spark exclusion from Google's own support page, both read the same day.