ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Copilot: Which AI subscription is worth it for creatives?

At the end of October, OpenAI doubled the quota in two of its three Pro subscriptions. Almost at the same time, Anthropic renamed its most expensive Claude subscription to Ultra, and Google now sells its largest AI subscription in two tiers. If you lay the German pricing pages of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Microsoft 365 side by side, you count 15 paid tiers.

None of the four providers offers an unlimited subscription. What is sold are quotas that, depending on the provider, renew every five hours, every week or every month, and they distribute image generation, video, Office integration and programming tools very differently across the tiers.

This analysis sorts the subscriptions for individuals as of November 14, 2026: what they cost, what you can do without a subscription, how the quotas are counted, which subscription fits which kind of work, and what happens to your data. The basis is the German pricing and help pages of the four vendors.

What do the AI subscriptions cost in November 2026?

Entry into a paid subscription costs between €4.99 and €23 per month, while the large tiers range between €90 and €219.99. Google AI Plus starts cheapest at €4.99, including 400 GB of storage. ChatGPT Go costs €8, Microsoft 365 Single €10, Claude Pro €18 and ChatGPT Plus €23. Anthropic explicitly states its prices without VAT.

ChatGPT Pro comes in three tiers, which OpenAI names after their dollar price: Pro 100, Pro 200 and Pro 500. The German pricing page only states "from €103" per month; euro prices for the two larger tiers are missing there.

OpenAI does not offer an annual subscription for private individuals; according to the help page on the Pro plans, Pro is billed monthly only.

Claude Max costs €90, Ultra €180, both net and only as a monthly subscription. Claude Pro is the only Claude tier you can also get annually, for €180 paid upfront, i.e. €15 per month.

At Google, AI Pro for €21.99 includes 5 TB of storage for Gmail, Drive and Google Photos.

What do you get without a subscription?

All four assistants also run for free, with smaller models and tighter limits. ChatGPT Free allows unlimited text chats with GPT-6, but restricts images, voice chats, file uploads and Deep Research. The context window, i.e. the amount of text the model processes at once, holds 27,000 tokens in the free version, around twelve pages of text.

Gemini offers the Flash-Lite model, image creation and editing, Deep Research and the Gemini Live voice mode without a subscription, with a context window of 32,000 tokens. How to create usable images with free tools is shown in the course Kostenlose Bilder per KI erstellen. Claude Free includes the Sonnet and Haiku models, web search, voice mode and up to five projects. The quota is limited every five hours and per week, and Opus, Claude Code and the research function are missing.

With Microsoft, you use Copilot to a limited extent with a free Microsoft account. The smallest paid subscription, Microsoft 365 Basic, includes no AI features at all.

In our view, the free version is enough for occasional questions, text drafts and individual images. It gets tight with long documents and series: Twelve pages of context fill up quickly, and an exhausted quota in the middle of an image series costs more time than the subscription costs money.

Why do you get a quota for your money?

With each paid tier, you buy a larger quota, not an unlimited one. It is measured differently: Claude and Gemini renew it every five hours up to a weekly limit, ChatGPT switches to a shared quota in tokens in December, and Microsoft counts monthly AI credits.

Claude Pro offers at least five times as much as Free per five-hour window. Max multiplies the Pro quota by five, Ultra offers ten times Pro per week, and verified Ultra accounts no longer have a five-hour limit at all, according to the help page on the Ultra subscription. Chat, desktop app and Claude Code draw from the same pool. Google AI Plus doubles the limits of the free version, AI Pro quadruples them, and the two Ultra tiers offer five or twenty times Pro. If that is not enough, you buy additional AI credits.

With ChatGPT, from December chats and the programming environment Codex count against a shared quota, measured in tokens; this is stated in the help page on usage limits. Responses in the fast Instant mode do not count against it. What changes with the switch is explained in our news on the shared quota.

In the Pro plans, the fast mode consumes 2.5 times, and the Ultrafast tier, available only in Pro 500, consumes eight times the normal usage.

Microsoft counts AI credits in Copilot, Designer, Paint, Word, Excel and other programs. In Microsoft 365 Family, up to six people share the Office programs, but only the subscription holder can use the AI features.

Which subscription suits which kind of work?

The choice follows your main task: images and videos, long texts, Office files or code. The four providers put their paid tiers together differently, and none covers all four tasks equally well.

Images and Videos

For image work, mainly ChatGPT and Gemini come into question. ChatGPT generates images starting with Go, with an upstream thinking phase starting with Plus, and promises unlimited and faster image creation in Pro. Google bundles image and video generation in the Flow tool and gives AI Plus 200, AI Pro 1,000 and Ultra 10,000 or 25,000 Flow credits.

So that these credits are not used up on failed attempts, a cleanly built prompt helps; ready-made building blocks for this are provided by the Prompt Toolkit for AI Images.

Long Texts and Code

Anthropic does not mention image generation on the Claude pricing page. Claude has its strengths in large volumes of text and program code: the context window holds up to one million tokens in all tiers, depending on the model, Claude Code is included in every paid subscription, and Claude for Microsoft 365 brings the assistant into the Office programs starting with Pro. Gemini reaches the same context size only from AI Pro.

Office and Storage

If you already work with Word, Excel and PowerPoint every day, the shortest path leads through Microsoft 365 Single: Copilot is built into the desktop programs there, plus you get 1 TB of storage. Research and analysis agents are only available in Premium. How to use Copilot in Office is shown in the Video Training on Microsoft Copilot.

If your photos and drafts are in Google Drive instead, AI Pro pays off through the storage as well: 5 TB are included in the price.

What happens to your data, and how do you get out again?

With ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, you can switch off the use of your chats for training the models; with ChatGPT and Gemini, the use is switched on by default. Microsoft does not use your content from Copilot in the Microsoft 365 programs at all for training its base models.

In ChatGPT Free, Plus and Pro, data sharing for training is enabled by default according to the notes on data controls. You can turn off the „Improve the model for everyone“ switch; OpenAI does not use temporary chats for training anyway. There is a separate setting for voice mode. With Gemini, „Save activity“ is enabled by default for users aged 18 and over. If you turn it off in the Gemini activity settings, Google no longer uses your chats for training, but stores them in the account for up to 72 hours.

Anthropic lists model training as switchable off for all Claude tiers; according to the Anthropic Privacy Center, incognito chats never go into training.

If you cancel ChatGPT, the subscription continues until the end of the billing period and does not renew afterwards. You can cancel Google AI at any time, but money for a partially used month is not refunded. With Microsoft 365, a subscription at a promotional price automatically renews at the regular price after the first month or year.

You commit for longer only with Claude Pro on an annual subscription and with Microsoft 365 on the annual plan.

What this means for you

Our assessment: For most creatives, an entry-level subscription between 10 and 23 euros is enough. The tiers from 90 euros only pay off if you work with the assistant for hours every day and regularly hit the weekly limit. More important than the model name is whether the subscription covers your main task.

1. Make the most of the free version: Work for two weeks with the free version of the assistant you use most often. If you hit a limit several times a week, that is the reason for a subscription.
2. Choose by main task: For images, ChatGPT Plus or Google AI Pro fit, for videos Google AI Pro, for long texts and code Claude Pro, for Word, Excel and PowerPoint Microsoft 365 Single.
3. Book monthly: Since the end of October alone, OpenAI and Anthropic have changed quotas and tier names, and from December ChatGPT counts differently. An annual subscription ties you to a status that may be outdated in three months.
4. Switch off training: Before you upload client drafts or photos, switch off the use for training in ChatGPT and Gemini or work in a temporary chat.
5. Only one subscription: Two entry-level subscriptions quickly add up to more than 30 euros a month. For the second task, the free version of another assistant is usually enough.

Examples of everyday office work with Excel, email and texts are collected in our article Are you already using AI in the office? Information as of: November 14, 2026.

Sources

• OpenAI Help: About the ChatGPT Pro plans
• OpenAI Help: Usage limits of ChatGPT and Codex
• OpenAI Help: Data controls in ChatGPT
• Claude Help Center: About the Ultra plan
• Anthropic Privacy Center: Is my data used for model training?
• Gemini Help: Manage Gemini Apps activity
• Gemini Help: Privacy notice for Gemini Apps
• Gemini Help: Context window and limits
• Microsoft Support: AI credits and limits for Microsoft 365 subscriptions
• Microsoft Support: Copilot in Microsoft 365 apps for home users, data and privacy