ChatGPT and Claude are both strong assistants for a business. They write, summarise, plan and research. The right pick depends on your team, the tools you already use and the kind of work you do most.
Prices and features below are as of October 2026. Both products change often, so check the official pages before you pay.
The short verdict
Pick ChatGPT if:
- Your team already uses it and knows its features.
- You want a low-cost paid plan for one person. ChatGPT Go costs $8 a month in the US.
- You want to share a project with others and choose who can edit it and who can only chat in it (Projects in ChatGPT).
Pick Claude if:
- You want Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Drive connected, with Claude asking before each action by default (Google Workspace connectors).
- You want documents you can export to Word, PDF or Google Docs from the chat (artifacts).
- You keep a lot of reference files in one project. On paid plans, Claude expands project capacity automatically when the files get large (RAG for projects).
For writing quality, the honest answer is that it depends on the task. Test both on your own work. There is a separate guide for writing.
Plans and prices
ChatGPT, from the ChatGPT pricing page:
- Free: $0.
- Go: $8 a month in the US. Prices differ by country.
- Plus: $20 a month.
- Pro: from $100 a month.
- Business: $25 per user a month billed monthly, or $20 billed yearly, for two or more users (OpenAI's billing help).
Claude, from the Claude pricing page:
- Free: $0.
- Pro: $20 a month, or $17 a month billed yearly.
- Max: from $100 a month.
- Team: $25 per seat a month billed monthly, or $20 billed yearly, for a standard seat. Premium seats cost more.
For one person, the main paid plans cost about the same. For a team, the standard seats match.
Data and privacy
This matters more than price when you work with customer details.
- ChatGPT. On personal plans, OpenAI may use your chats to improve its models unless you turn off a setting called "Improve the model for everyone". On Business, Enterprise and Edu, it does not use your data by default. See OpenAI's data controls page.
- Claude. On Free, Pro and Max, there is a setting called "Help Improve our AI models" under Settings, then Privacy, that you can turn off. On Team and Enterprise, the pricing page lists no training by default. See Anthropic's privacy help page.
Whichever you pick, write down what staff may paste into it. The AI policy template on this blog gives you a starting point.
Team features
Both business plans give you one bill and an admin who manages members.
- ChatGPT Business includes admin controls and single sign-on, as listed on OpenAI's pricing page.
- Claude Team includes central billing, admin controls, usage analytics and single sign-on, as listed on the Claude pricing page.
If you work alone, you do not need either team plan. A personal paid plan is enough.
Context: projects and memory
Both tools let you keep files and instructions for one area of work in a project.
- In ChatGPT, the number of files per project depends on the plan, from 5 on Free to 40 on Pro and Business. Each project can use your normal memory or its own memory. See Projects in ChatGPT.
- In Claude, free users can create up to five projects. Files in a project are used in every chat inside it. See What are projects?
Both also remember things about you between chats. Memory is useful for small facts. It is a poor place for prices and policies, as this guide to AI memory explains. Keep those in a one-page context file and add it to a project in either tool.
How to decide in one week
- Pick three real jobs you do every week. For example, a reply to a customer, a short post and a summary of a long document.
- Write one brief for each job, with your context file at the top.
- Run the same brief in both tools on the free or entry plan.
- Compare the drafts on how much you had to change. Fewer edits wins.
- Check the data settings and the price for your team size before you commit.
If the drafts are close, pick the one that fits the apps you already use. You will open it more often.
Once you pick, there are practical setup steps in how to use Claude for your business, and ready prompts in ChatGPT prompts for small business owners.