AI Pricing Index November 2026: What 12 AI Tools Cost Now

Last Updated: November 2, 2026

The AI Pricing Index is AI Business Weekly's monthly record of what the major AI tools cost. This November 2026 edition covers 12 vendors and more than 60 plans and models, with every price checked against the vendor's own pricing page or two independent sources on October 31, 2026. All figures are US prices.

The headline finding: AI pricing has collapsed onto a handful of shared price points. Five of the six biggest consumer AI brands now sell a plan at about $20 a month, five sell one at about $200, and the three leading AI labs charge almost identical API rates at every model tier.

AI prices have converged. The standard consumer plan costs about $20 a month at ChatGPT, Claude, Google, Perplexity and Microsoft, and the premium tier costs about $200 at five of them. On the API side, OpenAI, Anthropic and Google all charge $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens for their main workhorse model.

Consumer AI subscriptions run from free to $500 a month. Budget plans cost $5 to $10, the standard tier costs about $20, and premium tiers cost $100 to $200. ChatGPT has the widest range, from Go at $8 to Pro at $500, while Google has the cheapest paid entry point at $4.99.

The table lists each vendor's individual plans, monthly billing, from the vendors' pricing pages: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, Perplexity, Microsoft and Mistral.

The pattern is hard to miss. Almost every vendor has copied the same ladder, a $20 plan for regular users, a $100 plan for heavy users and a $200 plan for power users, so the real differences are in what each plan includes rather than what it costs. xAI is the main exception at the standard tier: its $30 Premium plan bundles Grok with X Premium and the Cursor coding editor in one subscription.

For a plan-by-plan breakdown, see our guides to ChatGPT pricing, Grok pricing and Perplexity pricing.

Flagship AI APIs cost $2 to $10 per million input tokens and $6 to $50 per million output tokens in November 2026. The mid-tier models most developers use cluster at $2 input and $10 output, while small models cost as little as $0.10 and $0.50, and DeepSeek and Mistral undercut everyone on price.

Prices come from each vendor's API documentation: Anthropic, Google, xAI, DeepSeek and Mistral, with OpenAI's rates cross-checked against DevTk's GPT-6 pricing guide. Standard rates, before batch or caching discounts.

Two things stand out. First, the matching prices. OpenAI and Anthropic now charge exactly the same at the frontier ($10 and $50), the workhorse tier ($2 and $10) and the small tier ($0.10 and $0.50), and Google matched the workhorse price with Gemini 4 Argon's launch rate. Second, the output-to-input ratio. The US labs charge five times as much for output as for input, while xAI charges three times and DeepSeek and Mistral about three times, so apps that generate long answers save the most by switching to them.

Caching changes the math further. Anthropic's cache hits cost a tenth or less of standard input, and OpenAI's GPT-6.1 Sol charges $0.10 for cached input, a twentieth of its standard rate. All three US labs offer 50% off through their batch APIs. Our Claude API pricing guide covers caching and batch rates in detail.

Business AI seats cost $19 to $40 per user per month for standard plans in November 2026. ChatGPT Business and Claude Team charge exactly the same, $25 monthly or $20 annually, Microsoft 365 Copilot costs $21 as an add-on, and Perplexity Enterprise Pro costs $40. Premium seats with higher usage run $100 to $325.

Sources: OpenAI's Business help page, Anthropic's Team plan page, Microsoft's Copilot pricing, GitHub's plan docs and Perplexity's Enterprise help page.

The ChatGPT and Claude match is exact down to the premium seat, which tells you how directly the two companies are competing for the same corporate buyers. For most small teams the choice comes down to which assistant fits the work better, not price. Our ChatGPT vs. Claude comparison covers that decision, and our Copilot pricing guide covers Microsoft's plans.

AI coding assistants cost $10 to $200 a month for individuals in November 2026. GitHub Copilot starts at $10, Cursor is now sold through the X Subscription from $8, and both offer $100-plus tiers for heavy users. Midjourney, the leading paid image generator, costs $10 to $120 a month.

Coding is where pricing is shifting fastest. GitHub moved Copilot to usage-based credits in June 2026, and Cursor, now owned by SpaceX, folded its plans into the X Subscription on October 12. Cursor is also set to lose access to OpenAI's models on November 12, 2026, according to Business Today's August 29 report on OpenAI's decision. See our Cursor pricing and Midjourney pricing guides for details.

Nine notable AI price changes were announced between September and October 2026. The biggest were OpenAI's new $500 Pro tier, xAI's X Subscription bundle, Anthropic's 20% Opus price cut and Google's plan to double Gemini 4 Argon's API price on December 1.

Sources: DeepSeek, OpenAI's release notes, Anthropic, xAI, Google AI for Developers and Android Headlines.

The direction is mixed, but the logic is consistent. Labs are cutting prices on the models where competition is fiercest, like Opus against GPT-6 Astra, and using introductory pricing to win developers before raising rates, as Google is doing with Gemini 4 Argon. Anyone building on the Gemini API should budget for the December 1 increase now.

AI Business Weekly checked every price in this index between October 30 and October 31, 2026, using each vendor's official pricing page, help center or API documentation. Where a vendor page could not be reached directly, we required two independent sources that agreed. Prices are US list prices, billed monthly, unless the table says otherwise.

A few notes on the method:

Journalists and researchers are welcome to cite the index. Please credit "AI Business Weekly AI Pricing Index, November 2026" with a link to this page.

Most AI chatbot subscriptions cost about $20 a month for the standard plan in November 2026, including ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro, Google AI Pro and Perplexity Pro. Budget plans cost $5 to $10, and premium plans cost $100 to $200, with ChatGPT Pro reaching $500.

Google AI Plus is the cheapest paid AI plan from a major vendor at $4.99 a month in the US. ChatGPT Go and the X Subscription Plus tier both cost $8, and Microsoft 365 Personal with Copilot costs $9.99. ChatGPT Go and the free tiers of most chatbots show ads or have tighter limits.

Among major vendors, GPT-6 Luna and Claude Haiku 5.5 are the cheapest at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash costs $0.30 and $1.20 at peak and half that off-peak, and Mistral Large 4 costs $0.70 and $2.10.

OpenAI and Anthropic compete for the same consumer and business buyers, so they have matched each other's prices at almost every tier. Both charge $20 for the standard plan, $25 per business seat monthly, and identical API rates for their frontier, workhorse and small models.

AI Business Weekly publishes the AI Pricing Index monthly, with each edition checked against vendor pricing pages in the days before publication. This November 2026 edition was checked on October 30 and 31, 2026. Major mid-month price changes are added to the current edition.

AI pricing in November 2026 has settled onto a few shared price points: about $20 for a standard plan, $100 and $200 for heavy users, $20 to $25 per business seat, and $2 and $10 per million tokens for the main API models. The vendors now compete on what each plan includes rather than on price, with a few exceptions: OpenAI's $500 tier, xAI's bundle, and cheaper APIs from DeepSeek and Mistral. With Google's Gemini 4 Argon price doubling on December 1 and Cursor losing OpenAI models on November 12, the December index will already look different.

By AI Business Weekly Editorial

Compiled by the AI Business Weekly team with AI assistance, then reviewed, fact-checked against the cited vendor pages and edited by Sameer Khan.

About the editor: Sameer Khan is the founder of AI Business Weekly. He has nearly a decade of B2B sales experience across SaaS, research and advisory, and AI, working with HR leaders and executives on research and AI adoption. He holds an MBA from the Ted Rogers School of Management.