Buyer's guide
Which AI subscription should you pay for?
13 vendors, 74 plans, and almost all of them priced at the same four points: nothing, about $20, about $100, about $200. That means the first decision is not which tool — it is which of those four lines you need to cross. Every price and limit below was copied from the vendor's own page on November 6, 2026.
Before you pay: of the 359 limits these vendors list across all 74 plans, 61 have no number attached — the vendor describes the limit in words and never says how much you get. We publish the wording instead of a guess, so you can see exactly which part of a plan is unknowable until you have bought it.
Start with the price line you are on
Free
Do I need to pay for AI at all?
Anyone who has never paid for an AI subscription and wants to know what the paywall is actually holding back.
14 plans · 12 vendors4 publish no figure
Under $20
What is the least I can pay and still get past the free limits?
People who hit a free limit once a week and do not want to spend $20 to fix it.
9 plans · 6 vendorsone publishes no figure
$20
Everyone charges $20 — which $20 is the best one?
The default decision: almost every vendor has a plan here, and for most people one of them is the only subscription needed.
12 plans · 9 vendors2 publish no figure
$100
Is five times the usage worth five times the price?
People who hit the $20 plan limit most days, usually coding agents running for hours.
10 plans · 9 vendors
$200
What does the top consumer tier add over $100?
Full-time agent users, where the subscription is cheaper than the same work billed at API rates.
7 plans · 7 vendorsone publishes no figure
The cheapest way into each tool
12 of the 13 have a free tier, so you can test before paying. This is the lowest paid plan each one sells, which is not always the plan the vendor advertises.
| Tool | What it is | Free tier | Cheapest paid plan | Its published limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google AI (Gemini, Antigravity) | AI assistant + coding agent (Antigravity, Antigravity CLI) | Yes | $4.99/moAI Plus | 2x the Free limits |
| ChatGPT + Codex | AI assistant + coding agent (Codex) | Yes | $8/moGo | GPT-6 Luna at Standard speed in the desktop app, subject to rollout; no message figures publishedNo figure |
| Cursor | AI code editor | Yes | $8/moPlus | $80/yr |
| Bolt | AI app builder | Yes | $9/moLite | 20 files, up to 100 MB each |
| GitHub Copilot | AI coding assistant + cloud agent | Yes | $10/moPro | 1,000 base + 500 flex = 1,500 credits ($15) |
| Amp | Coding agent | Yes | $10/moEducation (Megawatt at 50% off) | $10 in credits each month |
| Claude | AI assistant + coding agent (Claude Code) | Yes | $20/moPro | More usage than Free every 5 hours; no multiple statedNo figure |
| Devin (Windsurf) | AI code editor + cloud agent | Yes | $20/moPro | Increased quotas, including access to frontier models from OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, and SpaceXAI, plus leading open source models; full model availability; refreshed daily and weeklyNo figure |
| Replit | AI app builder (Replit Agent) | Yes | $20/moCore | Up to 30 hours of chat on Free Mode |
| Kiro | AI IDE + coding agent | Yes | $20/seat/moPro | 1,000 per month |
| Augment Code | Coding agent + context engine | No | $20/moStandard | $20 per month across LLM, Context Engine and compute |
| Lovable | AI app builder | Yes | $25/moPro | 100 per month at $25; 200 at $50, 400 at $100, 800 at $200, 1,200 at $294, 2,000 at $480, 3,000 at $705, 4,000 at $920, 5,000 at $1,125, 7,500 at $1,688, 10,000 at $2,250 |
| v0 | AI app builder | Yes | $30/seat/moPlus | $30 of included monthly credits per user |
How to decide in five minutes
Step 1
Spend a week on a free tier first
12 of these have one. If you never hit the free limit, the paid plan buys you nothing. See what each free tier allows →
Step 2
If you hit it weekly, pay the $20
12 plans sit at about $20 and for most people one of them is the only AI bill needed. Compare the $20 plans →
Step 3
Only climb when a limit stops your work
The $100 and $200 tiers mostly sell multiples of the same allowance. Climbing is worth it when you are stopped most days, not when you are stopped once. The vendors' own tips for stretching a limit →
Step 4
Check it has not changed since you read this
These plans change often, and vendors rarely announce a limit cut. Every change we have recorded, dated →
The cheapest paid AI plan we track is Google AI (Gemini, Antigravity) AI Plus at $4.99 a month.Filter every plan by budget and use case·The full limits directory·This month's report