This guide is free. What you may pay for, if you need it, is the tools: Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini have a free plan and subscription plans; Copilot Chat is included in the organisation's Microsoft 365 subscription, and a paid licence adds features to it. The price is the price of the service: the same model can appear in several plans, and the plan decides how much you can use it and which tools come with it.
Level 1 and almost all of level 3 can be done with the free plans. Level 2 depends on the program: the ChatGPT add-ins for Word, Excel and PowerPoint work with the free plan too, the Claude ones require a paid plan, and Copilot inside Word, Excel and PowerPoint requires the Microsoft 365 Copilot licence. A subscription buys three things: more use before you hit the limit, access to the most capable models, and the level 4 tools, that is deep research, work on the files on your computer, the browser driven by the model and tasks that start on their own. Plans for organisations add a fourth thing, which for anyone working with office documents weighs more than the others: by default the content is not used to train the models, and an administrator controls who uses what.
The table reports what the vendors state on their pricing pages, read on 6 October 2026 (Gemini on 24 October). Prices and plan contents change often: before you subscribe, check the vendor's page.
| Free | Paid, personal | For organisations | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude | Chat on web, desktop and phone; web search; file creation and code execution; memory; connectors; up to 5 projects. Not all models. | Pro, 20 dollars a month (17 with annual billing): more use, all models, unlimited projects, deep research (Research), work with a folder and scheduled tasks, built-in browser and Claude in Chrome, Claude Code. Max, from 100 dollars a month: 5 or 20 times the use of Pro and priority at peak times. | Team, 25 dollars a month per user (20 with annual billing) in the standard version: central administration, single sign-on, content not used for training by default, the organisation's connectors and enterprise search (next fact sheet). |
| ChatGPT | Chat; search; projects with 5 files; built-in browser. With limits: uploads, memory, data analysis, deep research, Work only from the desktop app. | Go, 8 dollars a month in the United States (the price varies by country): ten times the messages and uploads of the free plan, longer memory, scheduled tasks. Plus, 20 dollars a month: advanced reasoning, full deep research, Work on desktop, web and phone. Pro, 100, 200 or 500 dollars a month: much higher use and the most powerful models. | Business and Enterprise: content not used for training by default; the organisation's apps and Company Knowledge, the search across the connected sources (next fact sheet); price on request. |
| Copilot | Copilot Chat is included in the organisation's Microsoft 365 subscription: web-based chat, uploaded files, Copilot in Outlook, enterprise data protection, memory. | - | Microsoft 365 Copilot licence: answers that use the organisation's email, files, meetings and chats; Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Teams; the Researcher and Analyst agents; Copilot Cowork. For small organisations the page shows 25.20 dollars a month per user, 18 with an annual commitment on promotion. |
| Gemini | Chat with the lightest model (Flash-Lite); file uploads, up to ten per request; Deep Research, Canvas, skills; memory and standing instructions. | Google AI Plus, 4.99 dollars a month: twice the use, the Flash model, Gemini in Gmail. Google AI Pro, 19.99 dollars: four times the use, the Pro models, the one-million-token context window, Gemini in Gmail, Docs and Sheets; Tasks and scheduled tasks, which as of 24 October 2026 are not available in the European Economic Area. Prices read in dollars on 24 October 2026. | Google Workspace: Gemini in the Google apps with the organisation's data and the administrator's rules; price per user according to the Workspace plan. |
A contradiction worth knowing: Microsoft's pricing page lists Notebooks among the features of the paid licence, while the Notebooks guide says Copilot Chat is enough. At the office you check it by opening the app.
What to expect from the free plan. The first thing is the usage limit: in Claude it works by sessions, resets every five hours, and the number of messages that fit inside varies with traffic and with how long the conversation is; in ChatGPT text chats have no declared ceiling, but files, images, voice and data analysis have limits of their own, and uploads are three files a day; in Gemini the free plan has one model only, the lightest, and the paid plans buy twice and four times the use. When the limit arrives, the tool says so and waits: save the work and pick it up later, or carry on with another of the four. The second is the choice of models: in the free plan it is narrower, and the most capable model, where there is one, runs out first. This is why many people feel the service gets worse after a trial or a launch period: the features of the trial were those of the paid plan. The third concerns long documents, and it is the most misunderstood. A forty-page contract almost always fits in the file you can upload; the problem comes afterwards, when the model summarises it and puts into the text's mouth things the text does not say. The limit there is a different one, attention thinning out over a long text (stage 9), and the cure is the method of stage 3, quotations with evidence, working in parts, the check in step 5. Paying gives you more use and better models; the checking stays the same. These indications come from the vendors' support pages, read on 24 October 2026.
When it's worth paying. When in level 3 the usage limits stop you, that is the chat that cuts off halfway through the work. When you want to do level 4, which with the free plans you can only do in part: stages 15, 18 and 20 say so at the start. And when you work on office documents: in that case the right plan is your organisation's, because it also decides where the data goes. The next fact sheet says what changes. A subscription doesn't fix a badly written request and doesn't replace the checks in stage 4.