Choosing an AI assistant: personal plans, business seats and API costs

Start with the output you need

Choose a deliverable before choosing a subscription: a current research brief, an edited document, a spreadsheet explanation or a draft response. Write down what a usable result must contain and who will review it. A convincing first answer does not establish accuracy, repeatability or fit with your team’s process. Use the same task and permitted material across the shortlist.

Compare an account you could actually keep

Record the product, account type, selected plan, country and date. A personal assistant account, a company-managed workspace and an API project are different purchasing decisions. OpenAI offers both personal and workspace ChatGPT plans; do not assume one employee’s paid account establishes organization-wide administration. Ask every shortlisted provider which controls are included in the edition quoted.

Use three small acceptance briefs

For writing, supply a short original brief and require a revision that preserves five named facts. For file work, use a small table with a known total and one deliberate inconsistency, then ask for the calculation and explanation. For research, ask a dated question and open the cited pages to check whether they support the answer. These are proposed tests for your team, not measured results or a ranking of the products.

Separate source discovery from source support

A search result can help find a page without proving a sentence in the final answer. Check the publication date, the quoted scope and the actual claim. Record unsupported statements and the time needed to repair them. ChatGPT provides web research tools, but their availability and configuration vary. Apply the same citation review to the other assistants rather than awarding points simply because an answer contains links.

Check business access before connecting work

List the documents and systems the assistant would need. Ask who can connect each source, what access the assistant inherits and how access is revoked when a person leaves. Review training use, retention, logging and deletion as separate questions. A promise about model training does not by itself define retention or the permissions of an installed integration. Use synthetic material until your organization has approved the intended account and data flow.

Keep seats and API automation in separate budget rows

Write down the personal subscription, business seats, included usage, optional services and API consumption separately. Do not assume buying chat seats funds every automated API call. Equally, do not assume no subscription ever includes API credits: check the precise offer and eligible service. OpenAI documents API-key usage under API pricing. Ask for the billing unit, allowance period, overage behavior and a spending control for each automated workflow.

Model a normal week and a busy week

Count how many people need the assistant, their typical tasks and the occasional larger job. Keep uncertain consumption unpriced until you have a relevant quote or account observation. Note whether a task needs a particular research mode, connector or model choice. Assess the time required to review and repair outputs as well as the invoice. Compare a recurring cost for a retained plan, rather than an introductory allowance alone.

Make the decision reviewable

Keep the brief, selected plan, permitted inputs, outputs, corrections and date together. Agree the importance of each criterion before scoring. Use the software comparison scorecard to record your own evidence; leave untested criteria unassessed. Start with ChatGPT vs Claude, ChatGPT vs Gemini or ChatGPT vs Perplexity, then test the tasks that matter to your team.

Frequently asked questions