AI price tracker · verified September 13, 2026
What it really costs
New this month
GPT-6 Astra, September 3, 2026: $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output on the API, up from $4 and $20 for GPT-5.6 Sol. That is 2.5×. Consumer plans did not change price: Astra reaches Plus only inside Work and Codex, and the free tier still runs GPT-5.6 Luna. What that means for your bill.
Every price read off the vendor’s own page — with the month we checked it.
AssistantsWriting toolsCRMs
30-second tour · what this page is for
What does AI really cost this month?
- Checked every Saturday — Official pricing pages, US region — not last year’s blog post.
- Change log — Every verified price move, with the date we confirmed it.
- Free tiers included — Because the honest answer is often zero dollars.
Every price on this page was read off the vendor’s own pricing page in August 2026. That sounds like a small thing. It isn’t: while writing this month’s reviews I found one popular tool that had quintupled its entry price and another that had quietly deleted its free plan — both still recommended, at their old prices, by articles ranking on page one of Google.
So this page exists to be re-checked, not to be right forever. Prices below are per user, per month, on annual billing unless noted.
AI assistants (the ones most people should start with)
| Tool | Free tier | Paid from | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | Yes — unlimited text chats with GPT-5.6 Luna (uploads, images, voice and memory limited) | $8 Go · $20 Plus · Pro from $100 | Ad test running on Free and Go since Feb 9, 2026 — the pricing page flags Go itself with “This plan may include ads.” Plus and above are ad-free |
| Claude | Yes — real free tier | $17 Pro on annual ($200 up front) · $20 monthly | Most natural long-form prose in my tests; free week available by referral (card required). Paid per token instead, Sonnet 5 is $2/$10 per million — the September 1 rise to $3/$15 was cancelled |
| Gemini | Yes — but since Oct. 9, 2026 mostly Flash-Lite (Google’s own notice) | $4.99 Google AI Plus · $19.99 AI Pro | Best if your work already lives in Docs and Gmail |
Deep dive: Is the API cheaper than the subscription? · ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini · What the ads cost you · New to all of this? Start here instead.
Dedicated writing tools
| Tool | Free tier | Paid from | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jasper | No — 7-day trial, card required, auto-converts | $59 annual · $69 monthly | The old $39 Creator plan is gone, and when we read Jasper’s page on Oct. 10, 2026 the $59 tier was named Pro. Brand Voice + 100+ agents is what you’re paying for |
| Rytr | Yes — 10,000 characters/month, no card | $9 Lite | Renamed: when we read Rytr’s page on Oct. 17, 2026 the $9 tier (still “Unlimited content creation”) was called Lite, with new Personal ($19) and Pro ($49) tiers above it. The old $29 Premium is gone |
| Writesonic | 7-day trial, no card | $79 Starter | No longer a budget writer — it’s an AI-search (GEO) platform. The old $16 product survives only as Chatsonic |
| Copy.ai | Discontinued | $29 chat, then $12,000/yr | Left the blogger market — listed here only because other articles still recommend it |
Deep dive: The 5 best AI writing tools · Jasper, walked through start to finish.
CRMs for small business
| Tool | Free tier | Paid from | Real cost, 3-person team |
|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot | Yes — 2 users, 1,000 contacts, no card | $7 Starter (promo; $20 month-to-month) | $0 if two seats do; watch the $90 Professional tier + $1,500 onboarding |
| Bigin by Zoho | Yes — 1 user | $7 Express | $21/mo — the cheapest tier here with real substance |
| Freshsales | Yes — 3 users (unadvertised) | $9 Growth | $27/mo · Freddy AI billed at $49 per 100 sessions |
| Zoho CRM | Yes — 3 users, no email sync | $14 Standard | $42/mo · full Zia AI only from the $40 tier |
| Pipedrive | No — 14-day trial | $14 Lite | $42/mo · plans were renamed in 2025; “Professional $49” articles are stale |
| monday CRM | No — 14-day trial | $12/seat | $36/mo — three-seat minimum, so that’s the true floor |
Deep dive: Best CRM for small business, including what AI you actually get on each tier.
Home robots & smart speakers
Price change log
Every verified price change to the major AI subscriptions, in one running table. We check the official pricing pages every Saturday and log only what actually changed. Cite freely: “AI subscription price history: profhlab.com AI Price Tracker.”
| Date | Product & plan | Change | Context |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-17 | Rytr — Pro | (new) → $49 | New top tier. Read on rytr.me/pricing, Oct. 17, 2026. |
| 2026-10-17 | Rytr — Personal | (new) → $19 | New tier; the old $29 Premium tier is no longer listed. Read on rytr.me/pricing, Oct. 17, 2026. |
| 2026-10-17 | Rytr — Lite | $9 (Unlimited) → $9 | The $9 tier is now named Lite (“Unlimited content creation”); price unchanged. Read on rytr.me/pricing, Oct. 17, 2026. |
| 2026-10-03 | Microsoft 365 — Pro | not published → $99.99 | Back on Microsoft’s own store page at $99.99/month with a Buy button on Oct. 3, 2026, after we could not find it on Sept. 28. Still absent from the plan comparison page. |
| 2026-10-03 | ChatGPT — Pro 500 | (new) → $500 | New tier launched Sept. 29, 2026; the only Pro plan with Ultrafast. Read on OpenAI Help Center, About ChatGPT Pro tiers, Oct. 3, 2026. |
| 2026-10-03 | ChatGPT — Pro 200 | (new) → $200 | Reopened to new subscribers Sept. 29, 2026 after a pause from Sept. 10. Price unchanged, but new Pro 200 subscriptions get a lower usage allowance; holders from Sept. 22 to Sept. 29 keep the old allowance until Oct. 29, 2026. Read on OpenAI Help Center, About ChatGPT Pro tiers, Oct. 3, 2026. |
| 2026-09-28 | Kiro — Pro | (new) → $20 | Baseline added. AWS agentic coding tool; $20/user/mo for 1,000 credits, add-ons $0.04/credit. Tiers above: Pro+ $40 (2,000), Pro Max $100 (5,000), Power $200 (10,000); Free tier 50 credits. Read on kiro.dev/pricing Sept. 28, 2026. |
| 2026-09-28 | Zed — Pro | (new) → $10 | Baseline added. AI code editor; $10/mo includes $5 of tokens with usage-based billing beyond that. Read on zed.dev/pricing Sept. 28, 2026. Notable: the free student plan grants $10/mo in tokens – twice what paid Pro includes. |
| 2026-09-28 | Perplexity — Education Pro | $10 → $10 | Status change, not a price change. We flagged this $10 as unconfirmable on Sept. 19 after Perplexity deleted the article that carried it. It is first-party again: ‘Education Pro ($10/mo with verification from SheerID)’ appears on Perplexity’s help-centre article ‘Which Perplexity Subscription Plan is right for you?’, last modified Sept. 5, 2026. The price had moved to a different article than the one we were re-checking. |
| 2026-09-28 | Microsoft 365 — Family (monthly) | (new) → $12.99 | Baseline added; monthly option read on Microsoft’s consumer comparison page Sept. 28, 2026. Annual is $129.99/yr, so paying monthly costs $25.89 more a year. |
| 2026-09-28 | Microsoft 365 — Personal (monthly) | (new) → $9.99 | Baseline added; monthly option read on Microsoft’s consumer comparison page Sept. 28, 2026. Annual is $99.99/yr, so paying monthly costs $19.89 more a year. |
| 2026-09-28 | Microsoft 365 — Pro | $99.99 → not published | Reversal. We logged $99.99/mo on Sept. 19 from Microsoft’s own store page. On Sept. 28, 2026 Microsoft 365 Pro is absent from both the consumer comparison page and the individuals pricing page, and a store search returns no product; only an FAQ heading still names it. We are not calling it discontinued – the price is simply no longer published where we read it. |
| 2026-09-28 | ChatGPT — Pro (lower tier) | (new) → $100 | Baseline added. OpenAI now sells two Pro tiers; the $100 tier remains available while new sign-ups and upgrades to Pro $200 (Pro 20x) are paused as of Sept. 10, 2026 per OpenAI’s own help-centre article. Existing $200 subscriptions renew as usual. Read Sept. 28, 2026. |
| 2026-09-19 | Microsoft 365 — Pro | (new) → $99.99 | Baseline added. Fourth consumer tier; Microsoft had listed it with no price in early September. Now priced on Microsoft’s own store page (microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/microsoft-365-pro), monthly only, 1 to 6 people, AI for the subscription owner only. Read Sept. 19, 2026. |
| 2026-09-05 | Microsoft 365 — Premium (annual) | (new) → $199.99/year | Baseline added; read on microsoft.com Sept. 5, 2026. The monthly price, $19.99, is unchanged – this is the annual option we had not logged. |
| 2026-09-05 | GitHub Copilot — Max | (new) → $100 | Baseline added. Fourth individual paid tier, above Pro+, with 10,000 base + 10,000 flex = 20,000 AI credits a month; read on GitHub’s plans page and Copilot docs Sept. 5, 2026. Not present in our Aug. 28 baseline. |
| 2026-09-05 | Apple iCloud+ — 2 TB | (new) → $9.99 | Baseline added. The tier Tim Cook pointed at on the July 30, 2026 earnings call when he said heavy Siri AI users could ‘move up on an iCloud Plan.’ Read on support.apple.com/en-us/108047, Sept. 5, 2026. |
| 2026-09-05 | Apple iCloud+ — 50 GB (entry) | (new) → $0.99 | Baseline added. Apple’s Apple Intelligence footnotes 8 and 9 require ‘an eligible iCloud+ plan’ for the Home app camera features; this is the cheapest tier that supports HomeKit Secure Video. Read on support.apple.com/en-us/108047, Sept. 5, 2026. |
| 2026-09-04 | Google Gemini — AI Ultra (top) | (new) → $199.99 | Baseline added. Cut from $250/mo at Google I/O, May 19, 2026, per Google’s own post; read on Google’s US subscriptions page Sept. 4, 2026. |
| 2026-09-04 | Google Gemini — AI Ultra (entry) | (new) → $99.99 | Baseline added. New tier introduced at Google I/O, May 19, 2026 with 20 TB storage; read on Google’s US subscriptions page Sept. 4, 2026. |
| 2026-08-30 | Microsoft 365 — Family | (new) → $129.99/year | Baseline added; read on microsoft.com Aug 30, 2026. Was $99.99/yr before the Jan 2025 Copilot bundle. |
| 2026-08-30 | Microsoft 365 — Personal | (new) → $99.99/year | Baseline added; read on microsoft.com Aug 30, 2026. Was $69.99/yr before the Jan 2025 Copilot bundle (+$3/mo). |
| 2026-08-29 | Google Gemini — AI Plus | $7.99 → $4.99 | Cut from $7.99 on June 8, 2026; now confirmed first-party in Google’s Aug. 19, 2026 student-offer post. Storage doubled to 400 GB. |
Method: prices are read from each vendor’s official pricing page, US region, monthly billing unless noted. See How we count.
VERIFIED AUG 2026 · READ OFF VENDOR PAGES
The Physical AI library’s test bench, in one table. Ranges mean the street price moves week to week; exact figures were on the vendor’s own page this month.
| Machine | Type | Price · Aug 2026 | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Narwal Flow 2 | Robot vacuum-mop | $1,099.99 promo · list $1,499.99 | Successor to the Freo Z10 Ultra, which has left the official store |
| Roborock Saros 10R | Robot vacuum | $900–1,000 | 22,000 Pa is a spec-sheet number, not cleaning power |
| Dreame X50 Ultra | Robot vacuum | $850–900 | Register within 30 days to double the 1-year warranty |
| Roborock Q5 Max+ | Robot vacuum (budget) | under $200 | Vacuum-only — no mop, which is why the price drops |
| eufy X10 Pro Omni | Robot vacuum-mop | $400–500 | The mid-market default in most US roundups |
| Dyson V15 Detect | Stick vacuum | $849.99 | Rated in air watts (240 AW) — pascals don’t compare |
| Dyson Gen5detect | Stick vacuum | $1,049.99 | Same platform, bigger bin and battery |
| Shark stick line | Stick vacuum | $149–$299.99 | Where “good enough” usually lives |
| ECOVACS WINBOT mini / W2S / W3 OMNI | Window robots | $239.99 / $399.99 / $699.99 | US homes: exterior screens keep robots off outside glass |
| iRobot Select | Subscription robot | $29.99/mo | Three years ≈ $1,079.64 — and you never own it |
| Alexa+ | Assistant | $19.99/mo · free with Prime | $239.88/yr standalone vs $139/yr Prime Annual, which includes it — priced Sept. 6, 2026 |
| Echo Dot Max / Google Home / HomePod mini | Smart speakers | $99.99 / $99 / $99 | All three landed on the same number |
Every machine above has a full ownership guide — repair bills, subscriptions, the parts question — in the Physical AI library.
How I verify these
- I open the vendor’s own pricing page — not a directory, not another article. Software directories carry stale prices for years; two of them list plans that no longer exist.
- Regional pricing exists. Where a page renders in local currency, I say so rather than converting and pretending it’s precise.
- Promotional rates are labeled as promotional. A “$7” that becomes $20 next quarter is not a $7 product.
- When something changes, the article changes too — and the verification date at the top moves with it.
Spotted a price that has moved? Tell me and I’ll re-check it — contact page. Or get the changes as they happen: the Lab Report, one email a month. Unsubscribe anytime.