Claude vs ChatGPT (2026): Prices, Models & Which to Pick

✓ ReviewedLast updated October 31, 2026 by Florian Schröder

There is no overall winner between Claude and ChatGPT. ChatGPT is the broader all-in-one assistant: it generates images, its free plan includes unlimited everyday text chats, and its mid-priced model costs far less per task in one independent benchmark. Claude offers a larger context window in its apps, has said it will stay ad-free, and its Opus 5.5 model leads the Code Arena web development ranking. The main paid plan costs $20 per month on both.

Part of our ChatGPT guide and Claude AI guide. Plans and prices were last verified on October 31, 2026 on both vendors’ own pages. They are US prices before tax.

Disclosure: this comparison was drafted with the help of Claude, one of the two products compared. Plan and price facts therefore come only from each vendor’s own pages, outside assessments are named, and our own judgement is labeled as such.

Claude or ChatGPT: which should you choose?

This table is our editorial assessment, based on the facts further down. Both have free plans, so try one of your own tasks on each before you pay.

If you want…	Choose	Why
A free assistant for everyday questions	ChatGPT	Its free plan includes unlimited everyday text chats. Claude’s free plan has usage limits every 5 hours and every week.
To generate images	ChatGPT	Image generation is on every plan, limited on Free. Claude does not generate images.
One tool for voice, images, browsing and custom assistants	ChatGPT	Zapier rates it the better all-in-one toolkit, and its feature list supports that.
The cheapest paid plan	ChatGPT Go	It costs $8 per month, though ads may appear. Claude’s cheapest paid option is Pro at $17 per month with annual billing.
To work with long documents in the chat	Claude, with a caveat	Claude lists up to 1M tokens of context, depending on the model, against 256K for reasoning models on ChatGPT Plus. Large files can reach Claude’s usage limits first.
No ads on a free plan, without extra limits	Claude	Anthropic said in February 2026 that Claude will remain ad-free. ChatGPT may show ads on Free and Go in select regions, and its ad-free Free mode has additional limits.
An agentic coding tool	Compare both	Opus 5.5 leads Code Arena’s web development ranking ahead of GPT-6 Astra. Codex is on every ChatGPT plan, with restrictions on Free and Go, while Claude Code starts with Pro.
Help with writing and editing	Either	This is subjective. Zapier’s author prefers Claude’s prose to the GPT-5 series, but credits ChatGPT’s Canvas for editing documents in the chat.
A plan for your team	Either	Seat prices are the same on both, so decide by the tools your team needs.
To build on the API	Compare with your own tasks	List prices match at three levels, but Artificial Analysis measures OpenAI cheaper per benchmark task at each of them.

Plans and prices side by side

Level	ChatGPT	Claude
Free	$0. Unlimited everyday text chats. Limited uploads, images, voice, deep research, Codex and ChatGPT Work. Ads may appear in select regions, or you can choose an ad-free mode with additional limits.	$0. Limited usage every 5 hours and every week. Includes web search, file creation, Artifacts, voice mode and up to five projects. No Claude Code, Cowork or Opus.
Budget	Go, $8 per month. More images and uploads, longer memory, projects, tasks and custom GPTs. Ads may appear in select regions.	No equivalent
Main paid plan	Plus, $20 per month. Limited access to GPT-6.1 Sol and GPT-6 Astra, more deep research and Codex, ChatGPT Work on web and mobile. No ads.	Pro, $20 per month, or $17 per month with annual billing ($200 up front). Claude Code, Cowork, Opus, Research, scheduled tasks and Claude in Chrome. Fable only through paid usage credits.
$100	Pro 100. Pro reasoning with GPT-6 Astra, no five-hour limit in Codex and Work, unlimited image creation.	Max. 5x Pro usage every 5 hours and every week, Fable up to half of the weekly limit.
$200	Pro 200. More usage than Pro 100.	Ultra, formerly Max 20x. 10x Pro usage per week, no 5-hour limit on verified accounts.
$500	Pro 500. The highest usage, and the only Pro plan with Ultrafast models.	No equivalent
Teams	Business, from 2 seats. Standard seat $25, or $20 billed annually. Premium seat $125, or $100 billed annually.	Team, 2 to 150 seats. Standard seat $25, or $20 billed annually. Premium seat $125, or $100 billed annually.
Enterprise	Contact sales	Self-serve from $20 per seat billed annually (20-seat minimum), plus usage at API rates.

The limits work differently. OpenAI calls everyday text chats unlimited on every plan, subject to abuse guardrails. Tools such as uploads, image creation and deep research have plan-based limits, and ChatGPT Work and Codex use allowances that include a five-hour window on Plus, for which OpenAI publishes estimated message ranges. Anthropic counts all usage, including Claude Code, against a 5-hour and a weekly allowance and publishes no message counts. Our Claude pricing guide explains those limits in detail.

Models and API prices

List prices match at three levels, which does not mean equal cost. Prices are per million tokens (MTok). API use is billed separately from subscriptions, though higher plans on both sides include monthly API credits.

Level	OpenAI	Anthropic
Top	GPT-6 Astra: $10 input, $50 output	Claude Fable 5.1: $10 input, $50 output
Upper	No equivalent	Claude Opus 5.5: $4 input, $20 output
Middle	GPT-6.1 Sol: $2 input, $10 output	Claude Sonnet 5.5: $2 input, $10 output
Lower	GPT-6.1 Terra: $1 input, $5 output	No equivalent
Fast	GPT-6 Luna: $0.10 input, $0.50 output	Claude Haiku 5.5: $0.10 input, $0.50 output for prompts up to 100K tokens; $0.50 and $2.50 above that

The differences are in the details:

Long prompts: above 272K input tokens, OpenAI charges 2x the input rate and 1.5x the output rate for the whole request. Anthropic bills long prompts at standard rates, except on Haiku 5.5.
Cached input: reads cost $1 per MTok on GPT-6 Astra and $0.25 on Fable 5.1. At the middle and fast levels, the rates match.
Batch jobs: both vendors take 50% off.
Context and output: OpenAI lists 1.05M tokens of context, Anthropic 1M. Both list 128K tokens of maximum output.
Where to start: OpenAI suggests GPT-6 Astra if you are unsure. Anthropic suggests Opus 5.5 for most workloads.

The same workload at list price

This is our own calculation for 20 MTok of input and 3 MTok of output per month, with all prompts under 100K tokens. The vendors count tokens differently and their models use different amounts of reasoning tokens, so real bills for the same job will differ, as the benchmark costs below show.

Model	Cost per month
GPT-6 Astra or Claude Fable 5.1	$350
Claude Opus 5.5	$140
GPT-6.1 Sol or Claude Sonnet 5.5	$70
GPT-6.1 Terra	$35
GPT-6 Luna or Claude Haiku 5.5	$3.50

What independent rankings say

No ranking settles the question, and all of them change quickly. These were the positions when we looked.

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index

Viewed on October 31, 2026. The table shows each model’s best score and its cost per benchmark task. That cost is Artificial Analysis’s token cost across its own benchmark workload, not a bill. Google’s Gemini 4 Carbon leads overall with 59 ($7.76).

Price level	OpenAI	Anthropic
Top	GPT-6 Astra: 57 ($6.24)	Fable 5.1: 50 ($10.85)
Upper	No equivalent	Opus 5.5: 58 ($10.04), or 57 ($6.05) one setting lower
Middle	GPT-6.1 Sol: 55 ($1.27)	Sonnet 5.5: 54 ($10.02)
Lower	GPT-6.1 Terra: 51 ($0.96)	No equivalent
Fast	GPT-6 Luna: 28 ($0.15)	Haiku 5.5: 36 ($0.41)

Artificial Analysis labels the Fable, Opus and Sonnet rows “with fallback” without defining it on this page. Anthropic’s documentation describes a fallback as sending a request declined by its safety classifiers to another Claude model.

Arena rankings, based on user votes

Text Arena (October 27, 2026): Gemini 4 Carbon leads with 1528 and Claude Opus 5.5 is third with 1509. Claude Fable 5.1 (5th, 1504) is ahead of GPT-6 Astra (37th, 1476). GPT-6.1 Sol (27th, 1481) is ahead of Claude Sonnet 5.5 (31st, 1477), and GPT-6 Luna (97th, 1441) is ahead of Claude Haiku 5.5 (126th, 1425). The best-placed OpenAI model is GPT-5.6 Sol (22nd, 1485).
Code Arena, web development (October 27, 2026): Claude Opus 5.5 leads with 1810, ahead of GPT-6 Astra (1773), Claude Sonnet 5.5 (1770), Gemini 4 Carbon (1768, preliminary) and GPT-6.1 Sol (1751).

Zapier

Zapier’s comparison, last reviewed in October 2026, recommends ChatGPT for people who want an all-in-one toolkit and Claude for coding and demanding creative work. Its last hands-on update was in May 2026, and its writing section compares Claude with the GPT-5 series.

Our reading: this is a close race, not a clear win. Opus 5.5 narrowly leads OpenAI’s best on Artificial Analysis and leads Code Arena. At the same list price, OpenAI’s models score higher and cost less per task at the top and middle levels on Artificial Analysis, while Haiku 5.5 beats GPT-6 Luna on score at a higher cost. Google currently leads overall on Artificial Analysis and Text Arena.

How they compare by task

Coding and agents

Claude Code and Codex are the two vendors’ coding agents. Codex is on every ChatGPT plan, but on Free and Go it means GPT-6 Luna in the desktop app, subject to rollout. Claude Code starts with Claude Pro. Zapier’s reviewer gives Claude Code the edge, partly on adoption data from before GPT-6, and Code Arena’s ranking above points the same way for web development. For office work, ChatGPT Work is on every plan, desktop only on Free and Go, while Claude Cowork starts with Pro. Both can work with files on your computer. For a closer look at one coding decision, see Claude Code vs Cursor.

Writing

Judging writing is subjective. Zapier’s author finds Claude’s prose more natural than the GPT-5 series, notes that GPT-5.6 improved, and credits ChatGPT’s Canvas for editing documents inside the chat. That assessment does not cover GPT-6, so give both the same brief and compare how much editing each result needs.

Long documents and research

On paper, Claude’s context window is larger. Anthropic’s plan table lists up to 1M tokens, depending on the model. For its reasoning models, OpenAI lists 256K on Go and Plus, about 320 pages of input, and 400K on Pro, about 680 pages, plus a default of 500K for GPT-6.1 Sol in Codex and ChatGPT Work. Its everyday chat models have smaller windows: 27K on Free, 54K on Go and Plus, 128K on Pro.

A larger window does not mean more total capacity. Anthropic says file size affects how fast you reach a limit, and Zapier’s author uses ChatGPT for large amounts of data to avoid Claude’s limits. ChatGPT accepts text and document files of up to 2 million tokens each. Both offer deep research: limited on ChatGPT Free and Go, and from Pro upward on Claude.

Images and video

ChatGPT generates images directly, with limits on the lower plans. Anthropic’s plan table lists no image generation, and Zapier confirms that Claude cannot do it. Neither currently offers video generation: according to Zapier, OpenAI discontinued the Sora consumer app in April 2026.

Voice and everyday use

Both have a voice mode. Zapier highlights ChatGPT’s advanced voice mode, which can use your phone camera and screen sharing. Both also offer web search, memory and connections to other apps.

Privacy and ads

On individual plans, both let you opt out of model training, so check your settings. OpenAI says it does not train on ChatGPT Business workspace data, and Anthropic lists no model training by default on Team and Enterprise. OpenAI says ads may appear on Free and Go in select regions, are clearly labeled and do not influence answers. Plus and higher have no ads. Anthropic said in February 2026 that Claude will remain ad-free and that it would explain its reasons if that ever changed.

Can you use both?

Yes. Zapier suggests heavy users consider both, partly because each has usage limits. Two main paid plans cost $40 per month. Its example split is Claude for in-depth writing and coding, and ChatGPT for quick searches, images and web-based agent tasks. If you only pay for one, try your most frequent task on both free plans first.

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude better than ChatGPT?

Not across the board. Claude has a larger context window in its apps, no ads, and the top spot in Code Arena’s web development ranking. ChatGPT has image generation, a more generous free plan for everyday chats, a broader feature set and lower benchmark costs at its top and middle price levels. The better choice depends on your main task.

Which is cheaper, Claude or ChatGPT?

Their main paid plans both cost $20 per month, and Claude Pro falls to $17 with annual billing ($200 up front). ChatGPT also has an $8 Go plan, on which ads may appear. Team seats cost the same on both. API list prices match at three model levels, but Artificial Analysis measures OpenAI cheaper per benchmark task at each of them.

Is Claude or ChatGPT better for coding?

The evidence leans toward Claude at the high end, but the gap is not large. Opus 5.5 leads Code Arena’s web development ranking with 1810 against 1773 for GPT-6 Astra, and Zapier’s reviewer favors Claude Code. Codex comes with every ChatGPT plan, with restrictions on Free and Go, while Claude Code starts with the $20 Pro plan. Try both on your own repository.

Can Claude generate images?

No. Anthropic’s plan table lists no image generation, and Zapier confirms that Claude cannot do it. ChatGPT can, on every plan, with limits on the lower ones. If you need images in a Claude workflow, you need a separate image tool.

How does Gemini compare?

Gemini 4 Carbon leads Artificial Analysis and Text Arena, but this page does not compare Google’s plans. See our Gemini guide for that.

Sources

Plan and price facts come from the vendors’ own pages. The calculations and recommendations are ours. Plans and prices change often, so check them before you buy or budget.

ChatGPT & OpenAI Guide Claude & Anthropic Guide

Claude vs ChatGPT in 2026: Which One Should You Use?

Claude or ChatGPT: which should you choose?

Plans and prices side by side