The pricing desk

Know the real cost of the AI you are about to buy.

An independent desk for current prices, ranked comparisons, and the jobs people are actually searching. We hide dated briefings instead of leaving last quarter’s advice on the homepage.

Compare prices Calculate my cost Run a cost audit

New · Grok Bot

Grok Bot joins the autonomous-agent race

Access, cost traps, risks and how to benchmark xAI’s new autonomous teammate before paying.

Read Grok Bot review

Wires & labs

The DecoderClaude Cowork now runs its own browser inside the desktop app The Verge AIOpenAI’s rogue AI model incident was worse than we thought The DecoderNvidia snaps up Hugging Face for $12.9 billion as closed AI labs pull away ABC News Australia TechnologyPlans to cool AI data centre using trucked-in water and rainwater arXiv cs.AIRENDER: Controlling Reader-Facing Evidence in LLM Memory Evaluation arXiv cs.AILLM Agents Perform Controlled Experiments Using Simulation Models arXiv cs.CLUnsupervised Post-Training of Foundation Models: A Survey arXiv cs.CLThe Imperfective Paradox Is Not Necessarily in Large Language Models: A Benchmark Failure Before a Model Failure arXiv cs.LGFAMPWQ: Fisher Information-based Adaptive Mixed Precision Weight Quantization for Effective LLM Inference arXiv cs.LGMacroAgent: Regularity-Aware Macro Legalization with LLM-Agent-Designed Contour Algorithms Latent Space[AINews] NVIDIA buys HuggingFace for $13B, as OpenAI publishes their HF incident retro SiliconANGLE AIBill Gates issues stark warning about AI and the future of humanity Latent Space[AINews] Hot Chips: OpenAI’s Jalapeño, Cerebras CS-5, Groq 3 LPX, Apple M6 SiliconANGLE AIZ.ai open-sources ‘Ox Alpha’ model as GLM-5.3-Flash TechCrunch AIViral AI startup Instinct has raised $350M at a $2.5B valuation The Guardian TechnologyLondon neurosurgeons perform first successful AI-assisted operation to remove brain tumour BBC TechnologyUnexpected chat between OpenAI agents led to Hugging Face hack BBC TechnologyNvidia revenue doubles on continued AI demand The DecoderClaude Cowork now runs its own browser inside the desktop app The Verge AIOpenAI’s rogue AI model incident was worse than we thought The DecoderNvidia snaps up Hugging Face for $12.9 billion as closed AI labs pull away ABC News Australia TechnologyPlans to cool AI data centre using trucked-in water and rainwater arXiv cs.AIRENDER: Controlling Reader-Facing Evidence in LLM Memory Evaluation arXiv cs.AILLM Agents Perform Controlled Experiments Using Simulation Models arXiv cs.CLUnsupervised Post-Training of Foundation Models: A Survey arXiv cs.CLThe Imperfective Paradox Is Not Necessarily in Large Language Models: A Benchmark Failure Before a Model Failure arXiv cs.LGFAMPWQ: Fisher Information-based Adaptive Mixed Precision Weight Quantization for Effective LLM Inference arXiv cs.LGMacroAgent: Regularity-Aware Macro Legalization with LLM-Agent-Designed Contour Algorithms Latent Space[AINews] NVIDIA buys HuggingFace for $13B, as OpenAI publishes their HF incident retro SiliconANGLE AIBill Gates issues stark warning about AI and the future of humanity Latent Space[AINews] Hot Chips: OpenAI’s Jalapeño, Cerebras CS-5, Groq 3 LPX, Apple M6 SiliconANGLE AIZ.ai open-sources ‘Ox Alpha’ model as GLM-5.3-Flash TechCrunch AIViral AI startup Instinct has raised $350M at a $2.5B valuation The Guardian TechnologyLondon neurosurgeons perform first successful AI-assisted operation to remove brain tumour BBC TechnologyUnexpected chat between OpenAI agents led to Hugging Face hack BBC TechnologyNvidia revenue doubles on continued AI demand

This desk

DeskGrok Bot review: access, cost, risks and alternatives DeskIs Claude Cowork Worth a Max Plan? Only If the Folder Job Is Real DeskCowork vs ChatGPT Work vs Manus: Price the Task You Will Accept DeskChatGPT Work vs Claude Cowork: Best Agent for Knowledge Work DeskManus vs Genspark: Which Super Agent Produces Better Value?DeskBest Autonomous AI Agents: Manus, Genspark, ChatGPT Work and More DeskManus Pricing and Credit Calculator: What Each Completed Task Costs DeskGrok 4.6 in Cursor: Price the Accepted Change, Not the Launch Week DeskAgentic AI: permissions as a line item DeskChatGPT’s Lead Is Narrowing. Here’s How to Buy General AI Now DeskOpenAI Paused Some Frontier Training. Buyers Should Not Panic — or Ignore It DeskCursor Is Part of SpaceX Now. What Should Developers Actually Change?DeskCursor Origin vs GitHub: Do Not Buy Hosting Because of One Outage DeskClaude’s Writing Edge, After ChatGPT Stopped Looking Inevitable DeskRebuild the Content Stack Without Paying for Three Writing Tools DeskClaude Ran a Protein-Design Stack. Your Research Budget Still Needs a Denominator DeskAfter the Agent-Safety Stories, Cited Research Needs a Human Stop Point DeskGrok Bot review: access, cost, risks and alternatives DeskIs Claude Cowork Worth a Max Plan? Only If the Folder Job Is Real DeskCowork vs ChatGPT Work vs Manus: Price the Task You Will Accept DeskChatGPT Work vs Claude Cowork: Best Agent for Knowledge Work DeskManus vs Genspark: Which Super Agent Produces Better Value?DeskBest Autonomous AI Agents: Manus, Genspark, ChatGPT Work and More DeskManus Pricing and Credit Calculator: What Each Completed Task Costs DeskGrok 4.6 in Cursor: Price the Accepted Change, Not the Launch Week DeskAgentic AI: permissions as a line item DeskChatGPT’s Lead Is Narrowing. Here’s How to Buy General AI Now DeskOpenAI Paused Some Frontier Training. Buyers Should Not Panic — or Ignore It DeskCursor Is Part of SpaceX Now. What Should Developers Actually Change?DeskCursor Origin vs GitHub: Do Not Buy Hosting Because of One Outage DeskClaude’s Writing Edge, After ChatGPT Stopped Looking Inevitable DeskRebuild the Content Stack Without Paying for Three Writing Tools DeskClaude Ran a Protein-Design Stack. Your Research Budget Still Needs a Denominator DeskAfter the Agent-Safety Stories, Cited Research Needs a Human Stop Point

Start with the job

Coding

Editors, agents, accepted diffs

Writing

Drafts that survive review

Research

Cited briefs, not busy agents

Support

Resolved tickets, not chat volume

Agents

Permissions as a line item

Design

Approved assets, not generations

Free founder tool · stays in the browser

Will the copy survive a grown-up?

Paste a landing page. Get a desk score for slop, staleness, and decision-worthiness — then a review board of public-figure lenses. Not an AI detector. Not a publisher.

Open Founder Copy Review

Buffett · value
Munger · invert
Jobs · subtract
Bezos · Tuesday
Graham · specific
Feynman · teach it
Lovelace · method
Godin · permission

What people are trying to price

Start with a real buying question

These are the cost decisions buyers keep bringing to this desk. Open the one that matches what you are about to pay for.

Still worth opening

Updated recently

Pricing changelog

Compare · Aug 27, 2026ChatGPT Pro vs Claude Max: The $200/Month DecisionBoth vendors now sell two power rungs: OpenAI at $100 and $200, Anthropic's Max at $100 (5x Pro) and $200 (20x Pro). These tiers exist for people whose $20 plan interrupts genuinely valuable work - a minority that spends better than anyone else, and a tier most subscribers should not be on.Compare · Aug 27, 2026ChatGPT Business vs Enterprise: Which Plan Fits Your Team?Business (the plan formerly sold as Team) is self-serve: $20/user/month annual or $25 monthly, from 2 seats, with admin controls, connectors and business-data protections. Enterprise is quoted per organisation and adds SSO/SCIM, compliance tooling, higher limits and admin analytics. The divider is governance need, not team size vanity.Best of · Aug 27, 2026Best AI Coding Tools Under $20/Month in 2026Every serious AI coding tool you can buy for $20/month or less - Copilot Pro, Windsurf Pro, Cursor Pro, Claude Code on Pro - ranked by real value per dollar.Best of · Aug 27, 2026Best AI Tools for Productivity in 2026The AI productivity tools that actually earn their subscription - meeting assistants, workspace AI and presentation tools ranked by value.Guide · Aug 20, 2026ChatGPT’s Lead Is Narrowing. Here’s How to Buy General AI NowChatGPT still has the brand. It no longer has a free pass. A mid-August 2026 traffic and enterprise-spend shift is a buying problem, not a culture-war story.Guide · Aug 20, 2026OpenAI Paused Some Frontier Training. Buyers Should Not Panic — or Ignore ItReporting dated 19–20 August 2026 says OpenAI paused some frontier reinforcement-learning training to tighten safety and monitoring. That is an operations signal for anyone running agents, not a reason to rip out ChatGPT overnight.Pricing · Jul 21, 2026Manus Pricing and Credit Calculator: What Each Completed Task CostsChoose a tier from measured credits per accepted task, not the largest bundle; task complexity determines whether Free, Pro or Team produces value.Pricing · Jul 21, 2026Taskade Pricing: Plans, AI Credits, Agents and AutomationStarter suits light individual use, Pro covers many small teams, Business adds broader capacity, and Max should follow proven high-volume AI demand rather than fear of limits.

Fresh briefings

All public guides

2026-08-20 · 11 min read

ChatGPT’s Lead Is Narrowing. Here’s How to Buy General AI Now

ChatGPT still has the brand. It no longer has a free pass. A mid-August 2026 traffic and enterprise-spend shift is a buying problem, not a culture-war story.

2026-08-20 · 11 min read

OpenAI Paused Some Frontier Training. Buyers Should Not Panic — or Ignore It

Reporting dated 19–20 August 2026 says OpenAI paused some frontier reinforcement-learning training to tighten safety and monitoring. That is an operations signal for anyone running agents, not a reason to rip out ChatGPT overnight.

2026-08-20 · 10 min read

Cursor Is Part of SpaceX Now. What Should Developers Actually Change?

SpaceX closed its Cursor acquisition on 14 August 2026. That is a vendor-risk and workflow story, not a reason to rip out an editor that already pays for itself.

2026-08-20 · 10 min read

Grok 4.6 in Cursor: Price the Accepted Change, Not the Launch Week

Grok 4.6 landed in Cursor on 12 August 2026 with vendor-published API rates and a launch-week usage bump. The buying test is whether long-running agent work survives review.

2026-08-20 · 10 min read

Cursor Origin vs GitHub: Do Not Buy Hosting Because of One Outage

Cursor began rolling Origin code hosting to paid users as GitHub had a multi-hour incident that also took Copilot with it. That coincidence is a prompt for a hosting question, not an answer.

2026-08-20 · 10 min read

Claude’s Writing Edge, After ChatGPT Stopped Looking Inevitable

Enterprise buyers have been telling researchers they prefer Claude in head-to-heads. For writing teams that is a quality story. It is only a cost story if you put the right work on Claude and the rest on a cheaper model.

Live comparisons

All public comparisons

2026-08-17

ChatGPT Plus vs Cursor Pro: Which Is Worth $20/Month?

ChatGPT Plus and Cursor Pro both cost $20/month but serve completely different needs. Here's how to choose.

2026-08-17

AI Subscription vs API: Which Costs Less?

When does a $20/month ChatGPT or Claude subscription beat paying per token? The math is simpler than you think.

Reviewed with live model prices

GPT-4o vs GPT-4o mini: Is the Upgrade Worth It?

GPT-4o mini costs 97% less than GPT-4o. Here's when the performance gap actually matters.

Reviewed with live model prices

Claude API vs Cursor Pro for Coding: What's Cheaper?

Comparing Claude 3.5 Sonnet via API versus Cursor Pro subscription for professional software development.

Reviewed with live model prices

DeepSeek V3 vs GPT-4o: 20x Cheaper, Same Quality?

DeepSeek V3 delivers near-frontier quality at a fraction of GPT-4o's price. Here's what the real cost difference looks like.

Reviewed with live model prices

Gemini 1.5 Pro vs GPT-4o: Google's Challenger on Cost

Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro offers a 2M context window at prices well below GPT-4o. Is it the right choice for your use case?

How this desk stays honest

01Catalogue API prices are refreshed through the day. If a figure is more than two weeks old, we mark it stale instead of leaving it looking current.
02News briefings leave the public desk after three weeks. Evergreen money pages stay listed while the API catalogue is Live or Recent. We do not bump dates just to look current.
03The questions above are the buys people are actually weighing. New comparisons appear here while they are still current.

Know the real cost of the AI you are about to buy.

See if the stack is leaking

Will the copy survive a grown-up?

Start with a real buying question

Updated recently

Fresh briefings

Live comparisons

How this desk stays honest

Stop overpaying for AI tools