Prices checked: July 22, 2026, against each provider's official pricing page. AI prices change fast; see the update log at the bottom. · How we test
Disclosure: Tusk Central AI is our product, and yes, it's the free alternative discussed at the end. The prices below are the providers' own published numbers. Check them yourself via the links. Our math is just arithmetic.
Every major AI assistant costs "about $20 a month." That's the line, anyway. The real picture in mid-2026 is a seven-rung ladder running from $0 to $300 per month per provider. And if you want more than one AI (most people do), the numbers stack up fast. We priced every major subscription so you don't have to open six pricing pages.
Quick answer
Standard paid tiers cluster at $20/month: ChatGPT Plus ($20), Claude Pro ($20), Perplexity Pro ($20), Copilot Pro ($20), Google AI Pro ($19.99). Grok's SuperGrok is the outlier at $30. Subscribing to the five most popular standard tiers costs about $110/month, roughly $1,320 a year. Top tiers run $100 to $300 per provider, and the full flagship stack passes $1,100/month. Or: one ad-supported platform can give you all the major models for $0.
The full price ladder, July 2026
Provider | Budget tier | Standard tier | Top tiers |
|---|---|---|---|
OpenAI (ChatGPT) | Free $0 (with ads); Go $8 (with ads) | Plus $20 | Pro $100 / Pro $200 |
Anthropic (Claude) | Free $0 | Pro $20 | Max $100 / Max $200 |
Google (Gemini) | Free $0; AI Plus $7.99 | AI Pro $19.99 | Ultra $100 / Ultra $200 |
xAI (Grok) | Free $0 | SuperGrok $30 | SuperGrok Heavy $300 |
Perplexity | Free $0 | Pro $20 | Max $200 |
Microsoft (Copilot) | Free $0 | Pro $20 | — |
DeepSeek | Free: the industry outlier with no paid consumer plan. |
Three things changed in 2026 that most price guides haven't caught up with. First, the majors all planted a flag at $100/month: OpenAI's Pro $100 tier arrived in April, Anthropic has Claude Max 5x, and Google restructured AI Ultra in May. That price point didn't exist a year ago. Second, budget tiers arrived under $10, with ChatGPT Go at $8 and Google AI Plus at $7.99. Third, and most telling: ads came to ChatGPT. US users on Free and Go tiers now see ads beneath responses. The industry that charged subscriptions to avoid ads is now doing both.
What "free" actually gets you
Every provider has a free tier, and every free tier has a catch. That's not a criticism, it's the business model. ChatGPT's free plan caps messages per window. Claude's free tier has daily caps. Perplexity's free plan limits Pro Searches to a handful per day. Gemini's free tier caps its newest model. The pattern is consistent: free tiers are demos designed to make you hit a wall on a busy day. Which is precisely when you're most tempted to pay.
The stack problem
Here's the math nobody's subscription page shows you. The models genuinely have different strengths. Claude for writing, Perplexity for sourced research, Gemini for multimodal work, Grok for real-time information. So the honest advice everywhere is "it depends on the task," which quietly means "subscribe to several."
Two tools (the common recommendation): ~$40/month, $480/year
The standard five-stack (ChatGPT Plus + Claude Pro + Google AI Pro + Perplexity Pro + SuperGrok): ~$110/month, ~$1,320/year
The flagship everything-stack: over $1,100/month, more than $13,000/year
For a solopreneur or a student, $1,320 a year isn't a rounding error. It's a laptop. And most of that spend buys idle capacity. Nobody maxes out five subscriptions at once.
The alternative: one place, all the models, $0
This stack problem is exactly why we built Tusk Central AI. One interface with 37 top models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, DeepSeek, Perplexity, Meta, Mistral, NVIDIA and more, free for everyone, supported by privacy-respecting ads. Brainiac, our auto model picker, routes each prompt to the model best suited for it, so "which model is best for this task" stops being your problem.
The honest fine print, since this whole post is about fine print. Most of the lineup is unlimited and free, with no artificial timeouts or peak-hour throttling, and it includes genuinely strong reasoning models like Grok 4.3, DeepSeek V4 Pro, and Kimi. The newest flagship releases run on monthly credits, which you also get free; beyond that it's pay-as-you-go with the price shown before you spend anything. The ads don't follow you around the internet. If the industry is going to show you ads anyway (and as of February, it is), the deal should at least be this straightforward.
Frequently asked questions
Why does every AI cost $20 a month?
ChatGPT Plus set the anchor at $20 in early 2023 and everyone matched it. The real differences between $20 plans are in usage caps, model access, and bundled extras. Two $20 plans can deliver very different value.
Is there a cheap alternative to AI subscriptions?
Below $10: ChatGPT Go ($8) and Google AI Plus ($7.99), both with meaningful limits. DeepSeek is fully free. Tusk Central AI is free with ads and includes models from every major provider.
Are the $100 to $300 tiers worth it?
Only if you hit the caps on a $20 plan daily. They exist for people running heavy professional workloads. For most people, $200/month buys mostly idle capacity.
Do AI prices change often?
Constantly. In 2026 alone: OpenAI added a $100 tier and ads, Google cut its top tier from $249.99 to $200 and added a $99.99 tier, and budget tiers appeared across the board. That's why this post carries a "prices checked" date, and why we re-verify it.
Seven of today's leading AI assistants and platforms—ChatGPT (OpenAI), Claude (Anthropic), Gemini (Google), Grok (xAI), Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, and DeepSeek—shown together for easy comparison.
Update log: July 22, 2026: initial publication; all prices verified against provider pricing pages. Spotted a price change we missed? See our corrections policy. We treat corrections as a favor.