ChatGPT vs Grok: prices, plans and benchmarks compared

ChatGPT vs Grok comes down to price tiers and what you use them for. As of October 28, 2026, ChatGPT's paid plans start at $8 a month (Go) and $20 (Plus), while Grok comes through the X Subscription, which starts at $8 a month (Plus) and has a $30 Premium tier. This comparison is based on the products' docs and published results, not on our own hands-on testing.

If you want a straight answer: both have a free tier and an $8 entry plan. At the top, ChatGPT Pro runs $100, $200 or $500 a month, and Grok's Super and Ultra tiers cost $100 and $200. Which is better depends on what you do with it. Published benchmarks are thin and mixed, so no one can honestly name a winner for everything.

ChatGPT vs Grok at a glance

Prices are from OpenAI's ChatGPT pricing documentation and the X Subscription pricing page, read on October 28, 2026. Prices exclude sales tax.

The two companies price in different ways. ChatGPT names the model and gives message ranges. Grok names a usage multiplier ("4x", "15x", "50x") over a "Base" pool, and the page does not say how many messages that is.

What each plan gets you

ChatGPT's pricing documentation is written around Codex, OpenAI's coding agent, so most of its limits are about coding. It says Free and Go include GPT-6 Luna in the desktop app, subject to rollout. Plus adds GPT-6.1 Sol and GPT-6 Luna, plus ChatGPT credits for extra usage. Pro includes everything in Plus, and the $500 plan adds Ultrafast mode. The page says there is no five-hour limit on Pro at the moment.

For Plus, the page estimates local messages per five-hour period: 5 to 45 for GPT-6 Astra, 15 to 160 for GPT-6.1 Sol, 35 to 285 for GPT-6.1 Terra and 350 to 3,000 for GPT-6 Luna. These are estimates, and weekly limits may also apply.

Grok's paid plans share one usage pool across Grok and Cursor, according to xAI's page. Paid individual plans include X Premium benefits when you connect your X account. The Plus plan does not include Grok Bot, while Premium, Super and Ultra do. If you run out, you can buy top-up credits. For a closer look at the free tier, see our article on whether Grok is free. For ChatGPT, see is ChatGPT free.

Which is better on benchmarks

The independent data we could read is limited. Artificial Analysis lists a capability index comparison across 28 selected models. Each cell below is the model's rank, with its score in brackets. The page does not say what the scores are measured on, so treat them as a rough guide.

In this table, OpenAI's top models rank above Grok 4.7 in all four areas, and the gap is widest in engineering, where Grok 4.7 scores 41 against 62 for GPT-6 Astra. GPT-6.1 Terra is a lower tier of the OpenAI line and ranks below Grok 4.7 in finance, legal and healthcare by rank, though its scores are close. One snapshot of one site is not the whole picture. The same page gave no speed or cost figures for these models, and we did not find a comparable overall Intelligence Index score for Grok 4.7.

This is the part to watch. Other leaderboards, such as SWE-bench and Epoch AI, cover coding and general tasks, and scores move often.

Which one to choose

Our read, from the docs and the table above: if you mostly code or want the highest-ranked models on published results, ChatGPT's higher plans have the stronger numbers on what we could check. If you already pay for X and want Grok bundled with it, the X Subscription is the cheaper way in, because paid plans include X Premium benefits.

At $8 a month, the two entry plans cost the same, so try both free tiers first. Neither page gives a hard daily cap for free users, so the real limits show up in use.

What we don't know

Neither company's pricing page gave a fixed message count for Grok or for most ChatGPT plans, and we could not open chatgpt.com/pricing from our tools. The ChatGPT prices above come from OpenAI's pricing documentation, which lists plan prices alongside Codex limits. Plans, limits and benchmark ranks change, so check the pages before you pay.