Two consumer ladders, printed

Gemini and ChatGPT are the two assistants most people can open without a lecture. Both have a free tier. Both sell higher limits. The useful page is the price and what each company says you get — not a vibes ranking from a listicle.

I opened gemini.google/subscriptions and chatgpt.com/pricing on 23 August 2026, plus OpenAI’s Go announcement and the ChatGPT Plus help article.

Gemini’s official prices

Free is $0 a month with a Google Account. Official inclusions on that page: Gemini app access to 3.6 Flash, varying access to 3.1 Pro, image generation and editing, Deep Research, Gemini Live, Canvas, Gems, limited Flow, Gemini Notebook, and the usual 15GB of Google storage.

Google AI Plus is $4.99 a month. Official extras: 2× the Free usage, video generation and Daily Brief, 200 Flow credits, Gemini in Gmail, Vids and more, Gemini in Chrome (early access), 400GB storage. Google says Plus is available in more than 160 countries.

Google AI Pro is $19.99 a month: 4× Free usage, 1,000 Flow credits, more Search/agent features, Jules, 5TB storage, YouTube Premium Lite, Google Home Premium (standard). Ultra starts at $99.99 a month, with a $199.99 option for 20× Pro usage.

Those are US figures on Google’s subscriptions page. Local price can differ.

ChatGPT’s official prices

Free: the live pricing page lists unlimited text chats with GPT-5.6 Luna, subject to abuse guardrails, and limited everything else — uploads, images, voice, deep research, memory, Codex.

Go: OpenAI’s 16 January 2026 post prices it at $8 a month in the US, localized in some markets, with about 10× the free tier on messages, uploads and images on the Instant model, plus longer memory. The same post says OpenAI planned to test ads on Free and Go. Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise stay ad-free.

Plus: official help still says $20 a month, billed monthly, no annual plan. Broader models, faster replies, priority access, voice, images, files, deep research where available.

Pro: a higher tier exists. I am not printing a Pro dollar figure from a January blog when today’s pricing HTML did not show one.

The cheap question, answered

If the question is “what is the cheapest official paid upgrade among these two?”, Google AI Plus at $4.99 is lower than ChatGPT Go at $8 US, which is lower than Plus or Claude Pro at $20.

If the question is “what is free?”, both. Gemini Free wants a Google account. ChatGPT Free wants an OpenAI account. Gemini’s free tier is also the front door to Gmail and Drive features. ChatGPT’s free tier is not.

If the question is “which writes better?”, I did not run a blind test for this page. I will not fake one.

What you actually switch

Moving from ChatGPT to Gemini is also moving into Google’s data and storage world. I already wrote what Gemini Apps Activity does with chats, including the human-review copy that can outlast deletion. Open that piece before you paste a client file into a $0 Gemini window because it is cheap.

Moving the other way, you lose Gemini-in-Gmail and you gain ChatGPT’s model picker and, on Plus, the documented $20 feature set. You do not automatically gain a better privacy default. OpenAI still trains on consumer chats unless you opt out.

Neither product is Arena. Neither product is DeepSeek. Do not treat “AI chatbot” as one SKU.

How I would choose, labelled as opinion

If I already pay for nothing and I live in Google, Gemini Free is the first try.

If Free ChatGPT’s limits are the only pain, I would look at Go at $8 or Google AI Plus at $4.99 before Plus at $20. I would read whether ads are on in my country first.

If I needed the current ChatGPT reasoning models and Codex as OpenAI documents them, I would pay Plus and stop pretending a $4.99 Google plan is the same SKU.

I have not subscribed to Google AI Plus. I am describing their page, not a month of invoices.