Three products, three labs, one question in front of most people paying for AI: which one. The short version is that all three are good, they are good at different things, and the interesting difference is not the one the benchmark charts argue about.
Full disclosure
We build MODUS, which appears near the bottom of this page. Every price and model list here was read off openai.com, claude.com and one.google.com on 1 October 2026, so you can check all of it yourself.
What each one costs
| Product | Free | Standard | Top tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | $0 | Go $8/mo, Plus $20/mo | Pro from $100/mo |
| Claude | $0 | Pro $20/mo, or $17/mo billed annually | Max from $100/mo |
| Gemini | $0 | Google AI Pro $19.99/mo | Google AI Ultra $99.99/mo |
The standard tier has converged on about twenty dollars at all three. That is not a coincidence and it is not going to tell you anything useful, which is why the rest of this page is about what sits behind the number.
Which models you actually get
| Tier | What it serves |
|---|---|
| ChatGPT Free | Unlimited text chat on GPT-5.6 Luna, with limits on everything else |
| ChatGPT Plus | Advanced reasoning models with GPT-6 |
| ChatGPT Pro | Pro reasoning powered by GPT-6 Astra, across three usage tiers |
| Claude Free | Sonnet and Haiku |
| Claude Pro | Opus, Sonnet and Haiku, plus Fable on usage credits |
| Claude Max | The same models at five or twenty times the limits |
| Google AI Pro | Gemini 3.1 Pro and Deep Research at 4x access |
| Google AI Ultra | Up to 20x access, plus the Deep Think reasoning mode |
What each one is genuinely good at
- ChatGPT is the most complete product. Projects, scheduled tasks, custom GPTs, Codex, voice and image generation are all in one place and all well built. If you only ever buy one AI subscription in your life, the default is defensible.
- Claude is the one people who write for a living keep going back to. Long form prose, editing and code review are where it is strongest, and Claude Code has become a serious tool in its own right.
- Gemini wins on everything already being Google. If your mail, documents, spreadsheets, calendar and phone are Google, the integration is not a feature list, it is just how your day already works. The storage that comes with the plan is a real part of the value.
The thing all three have in common
Every one of these products answers from a single lab. That sounds obvious until you think about what it means when the answer is wrong.
A model that is wrong is wrong confidently. It reads exactly like a model that is right. There is no tone shift, no hedge, no marker. And the product wrapped around it cannot help you, because it has nothing to compare the answer against. ChatGPT cannot tell you that Claude would have said something different. It does not know.
The failure mode is not that the model does not know. It is that it does not know that it does not know, and neither do you.
What a second model is actually for
Running the same question past more than one frontier model changes the shape of the problem. Where they agree, you can move fast. Where they split, you have found the part worth checking. You find it in seconds rather than after you have already acted on it.
This is not a claim that any one model is more accurate than another, and it does not need a benchmark to stand up. It is a claim about what disagreement tells you. One answer is an assertion. Two answers that differ is a flag.
The catch is that doing this by hand means three subscriptions, three tabs and copying the same prompt three times. Most people try it, find it tedious and stop.
Where MODUS fits
MODUS exists for that specific job. One subscription, models from five labs, the exact model named on every answer, and a compare mode that runs one prompt across many of them at once and returns a verdict on which answered best.
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0, no card | The open models on a rolling window: Llama, DeepSeek and Gemini Flash |
| MODUS | $24/mo | Every provider auto routed, images, voice, mail, calendar and drive |
| PILOT | $59/mo | The frontier models picked by hand per message, plus compare mode |
The whole catalog is eleven models across OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and DeepSeek. Two of those labs do not sell a consumer subscription at all, so there is no version of the three way choice above that reaches them.
How to choose
- You want one tool and you want it to be excellent. ChatGPT Plus at $20. It is the most complete product on the list and that is a real answer, not a consolation one.
- You write or review code all day. Claude Pro at $20, or $17 billed annually. This is the one the people who do that work keep choosing.
- Your working life already runs on Google. Google AI Pro at $19.99, where the storage alone covers a chunk of the cost.
- You are already paying for two or more of them. Add it up before you renew. The next page on this blog does the arithmetic, and the answer surprises people.
- You want more than one model on the same question without three tabs. That is what MODUS compare mode is, and it is $59 rather than the $300 the three top tiers come to.
The honest summary: at $20 all three are good and the right one is whichever fits the rest of your software. The question that actually changes your bill is not which lab, it is how many.
Frequently asked questions
Which is better, Claude or ChatGPT?
How much do ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini cost in 2026?
Can I use Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini in one app?
Is it worth paying for more than one AI subscription?
Which AI model is the most accurate?
Prices and model lists were verified against each product’s published pricing on . This category moves fast. If you spot something out of date, tell us and we will correct it.