A small business typically pays $0 to $30 per person per month for a general AI assistant: $8 to $20 on individual plans, $20 to $30 per seat on team plans. Add AI inside your office suite, meeting notes, automation and a support chatbot, and a five-person team usually lands between $100 and $350 a month.
The headline figure is rarely the bill. Team plans often have a two-seat minimum, month-to-month billing costs 15 to 50 per cent more than annual, and a growing number of tools charge per seat and then again per credit, resolution or task. The tables below give list prices in USD, checked in September 2026; after them come three priced stacks and the costs that pricing pages leave out.
General AI assistants: individual and team plans side by side
These are the chat assistants most small teams start with. Annual billing is the lower figure where two are given.
| Assistant | Individual plans (per month) | Team plans (per seat, per month) | Things to know |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | Free $0; Go $8; Plus $20; Pro $100 or $200 (new $200 sign-ups paused since 10 Sep 2026) | Business Standard $25 monthly or $20 annual; Premium $125 or $100 | Business needs at least 2 seats; OpenAI says ads may appear on Free and Go |
| Claude | Free $0; Pro $20, or $17 billed annually; Max from $100, or $200 | Team Standard $25 or $20 annual; Premium $125 or $100 | Team needs at least 2 seats; Enterprise from $20 a seat plus usage |
| Google AI (consumer) | AI Plus $4.99; AI Pro $19.99; AI Ultra $99.99 or $199.99 | Gemini comes inside Google Workspace plans instead | AI Plus was cut from $7.99 in June 2026 |
| Perplexity | Pro $20; Max $200 | Enterprise Pro $40 ($400 a year); Enterprise Max $325 | Enterprise adds single sign-on, admin controls and internal file search |
| Microsoft (consumer) | Microsoft 365 Premium $19.99 | See the office-suite table below | Copilot Pro is retired; Premium is its replacement |
The two-seat minimum catches sole traders. A dog groomer working alone who wants the business-grade privacy of ChatGPT Business pays for two Standard seats: $50 a month on monthly billing or $40 on annual, against $20 for Plus. Plus lets the groomer switch off the use of chats for model training in the privacy settings, so the $20 to $30 difference buys admin controls and business terms rather than basic privacy. For one person that premium is usually hard to justify; for a team of three or more, the business plan is normally the right default.
The $100 and $200 tiers are for people who hit usage limits daily: long research, heavy file analysis, coding. Most owners never touch those limits, and the question of who needs a bigger seat is covered in standard vs premium AI seats.
AI inside Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace
If your business already runs on one of these suites, some AI is included and the rest is an add-on. Prices are per user per month on an annual commitment unless stated.
| Plan | Price | AI included |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Business Basic | $7 (was $6 before 1 July 2026 renewals) | Copilot Chat, web-grounded, now working on Outlook mail and open files |
| Microsoft 365 Business Standard | $14 (was $12.50) | Copilot Chat |
| Microsoft 365 Business Premium | $22 | Copilot Chat |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot Business add-on | $21 annual, $25.20 billed monthly; promotional $18 on annual billing to 31 Dec 2026 | Reasoning across email, meetings and files together; up to 300 users |
| Bundles with Copilot | Standard + Copilot $23.50 annual ($28.20 monthly); Premium + Copilot $32 ($38.40 monthly) | Suite and Copilot in one licence |
| Google Workspace Business Starter | About $7 | Gemini in Gmail and the Gemini app |
| Google Workspace Business Standard | About $14 | Gemini across Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Meet, Drive, Chat and Vids |
| Google Workspace Business Plus | About $22 | As Standard, with more security and storage |
Workspace prices are "about" figures because Google varies them by account and currency, and flexible monthly billing costs roughly 20 per cent more; confirm them on the pricing page for your own account.
A quick sum shows why the Microsoft bundles matter. A six-person team moving to Business Standard with Copilot pays 6 × $23.50 = $141 a month on the bundle. Buying the same thing separately, 6 × ($14 + $21), costs $210. Same software, $69 a month apart, simply because of how it was ordered. The detailed licence differences are in Microsoft 365 Copilot pricing: Business vs Enterprise.
Meeting notes, knowledge and writing tools
This is where overlap is most common, because several suites now include some meeting summaries.
- Otter.ai: Pro $8.33 per user per month billed annually or $16.99 monthly; Business $19.99 annually or $30 monthly.
- Zoom: meeting summaries and related features are included on eligible paid Zoom Workplace plans. Zoom retired the "AI Companion" name in June 2026, and ZoomMate, a separate agent product, costs $20 per user per month.
- Microsoft Teams: intelligent recap needs Teams Premium or a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence.
- Google Meet: "Take notes for me" needs Business Standard or above.
- Notion: Plus is $10 per member per month billed annually ($12 monthly) with only a trial of Notion AI; Business is $20 annually ($24 monthly) and includes Notion AI, AI meeting notes and enterprise search. Custom Agents run on Notion credits at $10 per 1,000.
A realistic overlap, for illustration: a café's management team of three paid for Otter Business at $30 each on monthly billing, $90 a month, to transcribe supplier and rota meetings held on Google Meet. They were already on Workspace Business Standard, which includes "Take notes for me". Testing the built-in notes on two meetings showed they were good enough for internal use, and the café dropped Otter, keeping $1,080 a year. Before adding any notes tool, check what your suite already does; auditing your AI subscriptions walks through that check.
Automation and CRM: where AI is priced by use
Automation platforms and CRMs increasingly charge a base plan plus usage, so the price depends on volume.
| Tool | Entry paid price | How AI usage is charged |
|---|---|---|
| Zapier | Professional $29.99 monthly or $19.99 annual for 750 tasks; Team $103.50 or $69 for 2,000 tasks | Each successful action step is a task; an AI by Zapier step uses 1, 3 or 5 tasks depending on the model tier |
| Make | Free up to 1,000 credits; paid from about $9 a month for 5,000 credits | Each module action uses a credit; routers and filtered-out bundles use none |
| HubSpot | Starter Customer Platform list price $20 per seat (promotions are common) | HubSpot Credits at $10 per 1,000; Customer Agent uses 50 credits per resolved conversation, about $0.50, and needs any Professional or Enterprise hub (usually Service Hub) |
Zapier's Free plan gives 100 tasks a month and two-step Zaps only. HubSpot includes 500 credits a month on Starter and 3,000 on Professional, and unused credits don't roll over. The point at which task-based pricing stops making sense is worked through in when Zapier gets too expensive.
Customer-support chat and help desks with AI agents
Support tools charge for the humans (seats or conversations) and separately for what the AI does. Figures are per month.
| Tool | Seats or base plan | AI charge |
|---|---|---|
| Tidio | Free (50 billable conversations); Starter $29, or $24.17 annual, for 100; Growth from $59, or $49.17 annual, from 250 | Lyro AI agent from $39 a month ($32.50 annual) for 50 Lyro conversations |
| Intercom (the company is now called Fin) | Essential $29 per seat annual, $39 monthly; Advanced $85 or $99; Expert $132 or $139 | Fin AI agent $0.99 per outcome; Copilot for agents $29 annual or $35 monthly |
| Freshdesk | Growth $19, Pro $55, Enterprise $89 per agent, annual | Freddy AI agent: 500 sessions free once, then $49 per 100 sessions; Copilot $29 per agent on Pro and Enterprise |
| Zendesk | Support Team $19, Suite Team $55, Suite Professional $115 per agent, annual | AI agents included with 5, 10 or 15 automated resolutions per agent per month by tier; extra resolutions billed; Copilot $50 per agent |
The AI charge is what swings the total. Intercom's Fin counts an outcome when a customer confirms the answer helped, leaves without asking for more help, or when Fin completes a configured procedure, handoffs included. A shop with 300 billable Fin outcomes a month pays about $297 for the AI on top of seats. Freshdesk charges per session whether or not it resolves anything: once the free 500 are used, 300 sessions a month is three packs, $147. Zendesk doesn't publish its overage rate in its help article, so ask for it in writing. The two support comparisons in this series, Tidio vs Intercom and Freshdesk vs Zendesk, do the full sums.
Project and work-management tools with AI
| Tool | Plan prices per user | AI pricing |
|---|---|---|
| ClickUp | Unlimited $7 annual or $10 monthly; Business $12 or $19 | Brain AI add-on $7.20 annual or $9 monthly (1,500 AI credits each); Everything AI $22.40 or $28 (5,000 credits); extra credits $10 per 10,000 |
| Asana | Starter $10.99 annual or $13.49 monthly; Advanced $24.99 or $30.49 | AI Teammates and Dash: 5 requests per user a month, capped at 50 per account on Starter and Advanced; extra requests $0.50 prepaid or $0.60 on demand |
| monday.com work management | Basic $9, Standard $12, Pro $19 per seat annual; minimum 3 seats, then buckets of 5 | 1,000, 2,000 or 3,000 AI credits a month by plan; extra credits about $0.01 each on yearly billing, $0.0125 monthly |
Watch the billing unit. ClickUp's AI add-on is charged across paid members of the workspace, not just the people who use it. In an eight-person workspace where two people want AI, Brain AI on monthly billing costs 8 × $9 = $72 a month, not the $18 the owner had in mind. monday.com sells seats in buckets, so a team of four buys five: Standard at 5 × $12 = $60 a month on annual billing.
Three small-business stacks, priced line by line
These illustrations use list prices and annual billing where offered. They are starting points to adapt, not recommendations for every business of that type.
Lean: a four-person bakery, about $48 a month
| Item | Who | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT Plus | Owner only: price lists, supplier emails, social captions | $20.00 |
| Google Workspace Business Starter | 4 users, about $7 each; Gemini in Gmail for order emails | $28.00 |
| Make, free tier | Custom-cake form to spreadsheet, under 1,000 credits | $0.00 |
| Total | about $48 |
The counter staff don't need their own assistant; Gemini in Gmail covers the order replies they write. If the bakery added a website chat, Tidio's free tier would handle a trickle of "are you open on Sunday?" questions before paying for Lyro makes sense.
Mid: a six-person driving school, about $110 a month
| Item | Who | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Team Standard, 2 seats annual | Owner and office manager: lesson plans, policy wording, enquiry replies | $40.00 |
| Microsoft 365 Business Basic, 6 users | Everyone, including four instructors, with Copilot Chat included | $42.00 |
| Zapier Professional, annual | Website enquiries sorted and sent to the right instructor, under 750 tasks | $19.99 |
| Otter Pro, annual | Office manager, for supplier and insurer calls | $8.33 |
| Total | about $110 |
The instructors get Copilot Chat through their Microsoft 365 accounts at no extra cost, which is enough for rewording pupil feedback and checking route notes. Paying for six assistant seats would have added $80 or more a month for little extra.
Fuller: a three-person photography studio, about $330 a month
| Item | Who | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Business Standard + Copilot, 3 users | Proposals, shoot timelines, inbox triage, Teams recaps | $70.50 |
| Intercom Essential, 2 seats annual | Owner and studio manager answer client chat | $58.00 |
| Fin outcomes, about 120 a month | Gallery links, delivery times, reschedules | $118.80 |
| Notion Business, 3 members annual | Client wiki, shot lists, AI meeting notes | $60.00 |
| Zapier Professional, annual | Booking form to CRM and calendar | $19.99 |
| Total | about $327 |
Fin is the largest single line and the most variable: in a busy wedding month, 250 outcomes would add about $130. That's the trade-off with usage-based AI, which the per-seat vs usage-based pricing tutorial explains in more depth.
Which plans to start with, by team size
If you're starting from nothing, this is the order that wastes least money. It assumes you already pay for Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, as most small businesses do.
| Team size | Start with | Typical monthly AI spend | Add next, only if a job needs it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 person | One individual plan: ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro or Google AI Pro, plus whatever your suite includes | $20 to $30 | An automation plan once a repeat job appears weekly |
| 2 to 5 people | The AI already in your suite for everyone, and team seats for the one or two heaviest users | $40 to $150 | A support chat tool if enquiries arrive out of hours |
| 6 to 15 people | A suite AI add-on or team plan for the office staff; included chat for everyone else | $150 to $500 | Help-desk AI or project-tool AI once you've measured the volume |
Two rules keep this honest. First, one general assistant per person is enough; paying for ChatGPT and Claude and Gemini for the same user almost never adds value in a small team. Second, add usage-priced tools (support agents, credits, tasks) only after you've counted the volume they would handle, because their cost scales with your busiest month rather than your average one.
For a one-person business the decision is usually between the $20 individual plans and the free tiers. For everyone else, the cheapest meaningful step is often switching on the AI your suite already includes and training the team to use it, before buying anything new.
Costs that don't show on the pricing page
Almost every overspend comes from one of these, and none of them is obvious from the headline price.
- Two-seat minimums. ChatGPT Business and Claude Team both need two seats, so a sole trader pays about $40 to $50 a month or stays on an individual plan.
- The monthly-billing premium. Zapier Professional is $29.99 monthly against $19.99 annual, a 50 per cent premium. Asana, Zendesk and monday.com charge roughly 20 to 25 per cent more for monthly billing. Staying monthly for the first few months of a new tool is sensible; staying monthly for years is expensive.
- Overage multipliers. Zapier's pay-per-task billing charges extra tasks at 1.25 times your plan's task rate on annual plans and 2.5 times on monthly plans. On a 750-task Professional plan, 300 extra tasks cost about $10 on annual billing and about $30 on monthly.
- Automatic upgrades. Tidio can upgrade a package automatically once 95 per cent of a monthly quota is used, after an alert at 80 per cent. It can be switched off, but it is on for some accounts.
- Workspace-wide billing and seat buckets. ClickUp's AI add-on and monday.com's seat buckets both mean paying for people who don't use the feature.
- Promotions that end. HubSpot often shows first-year promotional prices, and Microsoft's $18 Copilot Business price runs only to 31 December 2026. Budget on list price.
- Internal time. Setting up a support bot, writing instructions and checking outputs takes hours in the first month. For the stacks above, allow 5 to 15 hours of an owner's or manager's time at the start.
The general method for reading these pricing pages, including credits and usage fees, is in how to read AI software pricing.
Prices and products that changed during 2026
If you last compared prices a year ago, several numbers and even some products have moved.
- ChatGPT added a $100 Pro tier on 9 April 2026, alongside the $200 one; new sign-ups and upgrades to the $200 tier have been paused since 10 September 2026.
- Google cut AI Plus from $7.99 to $4.99 on 8 June 2026 and split AI Ultra into $99.99 and $199.99 tiers.
- Microsoft 365 Business Basic and Business Standard rose to $7 and $14 at renewals from 1 July 2026.
- Microsoft Copilot Pro stopped being sold in October 2025 and support for existing subscribers ended on 1 August 2026; Microsoft 365 Premium at $19.99 replaces it.
- Freshdesk raised its plans in 2026, with Growth going from $15 to $19 per agent on annual billing.
- Notion Custom Agents moved onto paid credits on 4 May 2026.
- monday.com began charging credits for Sidekick messages and AI workflow runs from 20 July 2026.
- Intercom renamed the company Fin on 12 May 2026 and was bought by Salesforce, with the deal completed on 10 September 2026. The helpdesk keeps the Intercom name.
- OpenAI's custom GPTs stop running on 11 December 2026. Any subscription you kept mainly for a custom GPT needs a new plan.
Expect this list to keep growing. Free-tier limits and promotional prices change most often, so recheck any figure here before a purchase decision.
How to cut the bill without losing the useful parts
Work through these in order. The first two usually save the most.
- List every AI charge. Look at card statements as well as invoices; individual Plus and Pro subscriptions on personal cards are common. Note what each one is for and who uses it.
- Check real usage. Microsoft 365's admin centre has a Copilot usage report showing active users over 7, 28, 90 and 180 days. Most other business plans have an admin usage page. Seats unused for 28 days are candidates for removal or a cheaper tier.
- Remove overlaps. If your suite includes meeting notes or an assistant, test it on real work for two weeks before paying for a separate tool.
- Move to annual billing only for tools that survived three months. That keeps flexibility while you're testing and takes the discount once you're sure.
- Buy bundles where they exist. The Microsoft suite-plus-Copilot bundles are cheaper than the parts.
- Check special pricing. Nonprofits can get ChatGPT Business Standard at $8 per user per month on annual billing, Claude Team at $8 per user (minimum two), and Gemini features included in Google Workspace for Nonprofits. Eligibility rules vary, so check them.
- Ask before renewal. Seat counts and prices on business plans are often negotiable, particularly on annual commitments.
As a sense check, here's how one illustrative owner's before and after looked. A bakery owner found five charges totalling about $143 a month: Plus for herself ($20), Plus for a part-time manager who had used it twice in two months ($20), Otter Pro monthly ($16.99), a Zapier Professional plan on monthly billing ($29.99) and Google Workspace Business Standard for four people (about $56). Cancelling the unused Plus seat, dropping Otter in favour of Meet's built-in notes, which Business Standard already includes, and switching Zapier to annual brought it to about $96, a saving of roughly $560 a year with nothing the team relied on lost.
If you want the bigger picture of what AI should cost your business in total, including setup time, how much AI costs a small business in 2026 puts these subscriptions into a full budget.
Further reads
- How Much Should a Small Business Budget for AI? — Turn these prices into a yearly AI budget with a sensible buffer.
- How to Negotiate AI Software Prices and Seat Numbers — How to ask for better seat numbers and prices before renewal.
- Free AI Tools vs Paid Plans: What a Small Business Should Pay For — Which jobs the free tiers genuinely cover, and where they fall short.
- How Much Does an AI Note-Taker Cost per Seat? — A closer look at meeting-notes pricing per person.
- How Much Does Customer Service Software With AI Cost per Agent? — Help-desk AI costs worked out per support agent.
- Who in Your Team Actually Needs a Paid AI Licence? — A three-question test for deciding who gets a paid AI seat, a two-week usage log, and a florist's before-and-after seat bill with 2026 list prices.
- How Many AI Tools Does a Small Business Actually Need? — Why most small firms need two or three AI tools, how to spot paying twice for one job, and three businesses' stacks with monthly costs.
- Best AI Tools for Cafés and Coffee Shops, Grouped by Task — The AI tools a café can use, sorted by the job they do across the day, with what each costs and where each one lets you down.
- Best AI Tools for Small Event Planning Businesses — Eight AI tools for small event planning businesses, ranked by the hours they give back, with prices, first uses and the two to handle with care.
- How Personal Trainers Can Use ChatGPT Safely for Client Programmes — What to type and what to leave out, a prompt that builds in each client's limits, a five-minute check before sending, and where ChatGPT must stop.
- How Much Does AI Cost a Small Accounting Firm? — An itemised AI budget for three-, eight- and fifteen-person accounting firms: list prices, per-client costs, internal time and the hidden extras.
- The AI Tool Stack a One-Person Consultancy Actually Needs — Five layers, priced honestly: what a solo consultant should pay for, what's already included, what to skip, and how to tell a tool is earning its place.
- How Much Does AI Marketing Cost a Small Business Each Month? — An itemised monthly budget for AI marketing tools, three worked budgets from lean to busy, and the hidden costs that push the bill up.
- Free vs Paid AI Marketing Tools: What Is Worth Paying For — A category-by-category comparison of free and paid AI marketing tools, the upgrades that pay for themselves, and the ones that rarely do.
- What It Costs to Set Up an AI CRM for a Small Team — Itemised AI CRM costs, licence and AI credit prices, a four-person delicatessen costed three ways, and the hidden costs that double year two.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: vendor pricing pages and help documentation for OpenAI ChatGPT, Anthropic Claude, Google AI and Google Workspace, Perplexity, Microsoft 365, Otter.ai, Notion, Zapier, Make, HubSpot, Tidio, Intercom, Freshdesk, Zendesk, ClickUp, Asana and monday.com, checked September 2026.