Cheapest AI subscription: 9 paid plans ranked from $4.17 a month

Which AI subscription is cheapest?

Poe Basic is the cheapest AI subscription, at $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year. Google AI Plus ties it at $4.99 a month but sells no yearly plan. We read every price below on the company's own pricing page or its US App Store listing on 9 November 2026. They're US prices, before tax, and each row is the cheapest paid plan that company sells to one person:

A whole year tells the story better. Poe Basic costs $49.99 for twelve months, and Google AI Plus costs $59.88 because Google bills it monthly. ChatGPT Go comes to $96, and Grok Plus to $80. xAI prints that as "$80/yr ($7/mo)", rounding up from $6.67. Anthropic rounds Claude Pro's $200 year to "$17" a month the same way. Perplexity does too.

Does the cheapest plan include the best model?

Not at OpenAI, Google or xAI. Each one's cheapest paid tier stops below the model it advertises most. Anthropic is the only one of the four whose cheapest paid plan includes its top chat model in the allowance. Here's what each company's cheapest plan runs and what the first plan with the top model costs, read 9 November 2026:

OpenAI's pricing docs give Free and Go the same model, GPT-6 Luna. Plus is the first plan with GPT-6.1 Sol, and GPT-6 Astra sits on Pro. Google's US plan page lists "Access to our Flash model" on AI Plus and says "Looking for Gemini 4 Argon? Select AI Pro or AI Ultra below." The Plus card also carries an "Includes Gemini 4 Argon" tag that its own feature list doesn't back, so treat Argon on Plus as unconfirmed. xAI's Plus card on Cursor's pricing page, which sells the same X Subscription, says "Only Grok models are available on this plan." Premium adds "Latest Grok models."

Claude goes the other way. Anthropic's pricing page marks Opus "Yes" for Pro and "No" for Free. It's also the one big lab with no tier under $20. So if you want Opus, you don't have to climb past a cheaper tier first, but you also won't find a $5 or $8 version of Claude that you could start on and then move up from later. The catch is Claude Fable. Pro reaches it only through usage credits, which cost extra.

What is the cheapest AI chatbot you don't pay for?

DeepSeek is the cheapest AI chatbot, because it has no paid plan at all. Its US App Store listing shows the app as "Free" with no in-app purchases, read 9 November 2026. Every big lab also runs a free tier. The free model is always a smaller one:

Claude's free plan stands out here. It includes Sonnet, Anthropic's middle model, so a free account gets more than a cut-down model. Google's free plan sits one step below AI Plus, on Flash-Lite. If you send a few messages a day, start free and pay only when a limit stops you twice in one week. Is Claude free good enough tests where that line falls for Claude.

How do you pay less than the list price?

Pay for a year, check for a student price, and buy where your country is priced lower. Those three cover almost every honest discount on this list. Coupon sites that promise codes for ChatGPT or Claude don't change that, since neither company publishes one. If a site tells you it has a code for either of them, it's selling you something that the company itself has never put on its own page. Skip it.

Yearly billing saves the most on the plans that offer it. Claude Pro drops from $240 to $200, and Grok Plus from $96 to $80, ten months' price for twelve. Poe Basic saves $9.89 a year and Microsoft 365 Personal saves $19.89. ChatGPT Go and Google AI Plus don't sell a year at all.

Students get the deepest cuts. Mistral's pricing page says in its FAQ that "Verified students can get Mistral Pro for $5.99 / month (normally $14.99)." The same page's Education card shows $14.99, so check the price at checkout before you pay. OpenAI's page lists ChatGPT for Teachers free for verified US K to 12 educators through June 2027. AI student discounts lists the rest. Country prices move the other way for many readers, and the cheapest country for AI subscriptions compares them.

Where does Whizi fit on price?

Whizi Starter costs $15.99 a month, or $10.99 billed yearly, and it isn't the cheapest plan here. Poe Basic, Google AI Plus, Grok Plus and ChatGPT Go all cost less. Starter covers ChatGPT Luna, Claude Haiku and Whizi AI in one chat, with 800 credits a month. If one cheap model from one company does the job, buy that company's plan.

Whizi, which publishes this page, cuts the bill at the top instead. Whizi Pro costs $29.99 a month, or $19.99 billed yearly. It puts Claude Opus, GPT-6.1 Sol, Gemini models and Grok 4.7 in one chat, with side by side answers. The four labs' own top plans cost $89.99 together. Credits per message vary by model, so check pricing against how you'd use it.

It doesn't replace everything those plans include. Whizi has no Codex, no Claude Code and no API. It has no Grok Bot, no Copilot inside Word and none of Google's 400 GB or 5 TB of storage. Video is Powerhouse only, apart from one free clip per account. Its first 7 days cost $0.99 on Starter or $1.99 on Pro, then the full monthly price. The cheapest way to use Claude and GPT prices that pairing four ways, and one subscription for every AI model covers what a single plan can and can't do.

Which cheap AI subscription should you buy?

Buy the cheapest plan from the company whose model you already use. If you're not sure which one that is, it's the one you opened most this week. That's ChatGPT Go at $8 for ChatGPT, Google AI Plus at $4.99 for Gemini, and Grok Plus at $8 for Grok. Claude has no cheap tier, so it's Pro at $20 or $200 a year.

Pick Poe Basic at $4.99 if you want several labs on one cheap bill and light use. Points run out fast on big models. Pick Microsoft 365 Personal if you'd pay for Word and Excel anyway, since Copilot comes with it. And skip the paid plan entirely if the free tier hasn't stopped you yet. The best AI subscription ranks the plans by what they do, not by price.