The AI Index
Every major AI assistant, compared.
One table for the whole assistant market. Every figure below was checked against the provider's own pricing or model page on 28 September 2026, and each row links to its source so you can verify the live number yourself. Where a provider does not publish a figure, we say so rather than guess.
| Assistant | Paid plan | Per month | Free tier | Flagship model | Context | Standout strength |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT OpenAI | Plus | R399 | Yes: unlimited GPT-5.6 Luna chats (fair use) | GPT-6 Astra | 256K reasoning (Plus), 400K (Pro) | Billed in rand; Go plan from R149 |
| Claude Anthropic | Pro | US$20 (R326) | Yes: Sonnet and Haiku, capped | Claude Opus 5.5 and Fable 5.1 | Up to 1M (varies by model) | Claude Code included from Pro |
| Gemini Google | Google AI Pro | R429.99 | Yes: 3.6 Flash, some 3.1 Pro | Gemini 3.1 Pro | 1M (Google AI Pro) | Cheapest paid step: Google AI Plus R104.99 |
| Microsoft Copilot Microsoft | Microsoft 365 Personal | R159 | Yes: Copilot app and web | Not stated | Not stated | Copilot inside Word, Excel and Outlook |
| Perplexity Perplexity | Pro | US$20 (R326) | Yes: basic models, capped | Choice of GPT, Claude, Gemini and more | Not stated | Citations in every answer |
| Grok xAI (SpaceXAI) | SuperGrok (App Store) | R599.99 | Yes: Fast mode | Grok 4.6 (app), Grok 4.7 (API) | 500K (Grok 4.7 API) | Live search across the web and X |
| DeepSeek DeepSeek | No paid chat plan | Free | Yes, fully free | DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash | 1M (API) | Completely free chat app |
| Meta AI Meta | No paid plan needed | Free | Yes: in WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook | Muse Spark | Not stated | Built into WhatsApp |
| Mistral Vibe Mistral | Pro | US$14.99 (R245) | Yes, limited | Mistral Medium 3.5 | 256K | Cheapest full paid plan; training opt-out |
Three things the table shows
- Rand pricing has arrived. OpenAI and Google now bill South Africans in rand, from R104.99 (Google AI Plus) and R149 (ChatGPT Go) up to R399 and R429.99 for their main plans. Claude, Perplexity and Mistral still charge in US dollars, so VAT and card fees come on top.
- Free no longer means weak. Gemini's and ChatGPT's free plans run strong current models, DeepSeek's chat app is free with a 1M-token model behind it, and Meta AI is free inside WhatsApp. The paid tiers now sell limits, integration and data terms more than raw capability.
- Context windows cluster between 256K and 1M. Claude and Gemini reach a million tokens in their apps, while ChatGPT Plus uses 256K for reasoning. The practical catch: the chat app often exposes less than the model's API maximum.
How we compiled this
Each price, plan and model was read off the provider's official pricing or model page on 28 September 2026, linked in the table. A few honest caveats, because a data page is only as good as its footnotes:
- Microsoft Copilot's model and context window are not stated. Microsoft's South African plan pages do not name a model or a token figure for consumer Copilot, so we left them blank rather than borrow GitHub Copilot's numbers, which belong to a different product.
- In-app and API context windows differ. Where we could only find an API figure, we label it (for example Grok 4.7 at 500K and DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash at 1M, both from the vendors' developer docs).
- Grok's price is its South African App Store price (R599.99 a month for SuperGrok), because xAI's web plans page does not show prices before you sign in. US dollar prices elsewhere are converted at R16.32 and exclude VAT.
Spotted a number that has moved? That is the nature of this market. Check the linked source for the live figure, and we update the table as plans change. Nothing here is invented; anything we could not verify is flagged, not filled in.
For the verdicts behind the data, see the ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini head-to-head or browse all of the rankings.