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If €20 a month for one assistant has started to feel like a lot, there are four routes — and for a fair number of people the honest answer is that you are already on the right plan. This page is the arithmetic for each, including what switching actually costs you.
I pay for Claude rather than ChatGPT, and Claude pays me nothing. The aggregators further down do pay me, and I have not used any of them daily — that is marked where it matters.
Which problem are you actually solving?
| What is bothering you | The route |
|---|---|
| I want a different model, not a cheaper one | another direct subscription |
| I want several models for one fee | an aggregator |
| I use it in bursts, not daily | pay per use |
| I barely use it | the free tiers |
| Nothing — it works | keep it |
Getting this wrong is how people end up paying for three things. The most common mistake in this category is adding a subscription rather than replacing one.
Is a different direct subscription the answer?
If your complaint is the model rather than the price, yes, and it costs about the same.
Claude sits at roughly €20 a month, as do the equivalents from other vendors. You get the newest model on the day it ships, the official apps, and nobody in between. For daily work that last point is worth more than it sounds — a middle layer decides when you get things, and you find out afterwards.
This is what I do: one general subscription and one coding agent, about €40 a month total, and that is the entire model budget. The full breakdown is in what AI tools actually cost per month.
The whole list
68 tools, what each costs and when you actually need it. Updated twice a year.
Do aggregators actually save money?
They can, and the number on their pricing page is not the one to look at.
GlobalGPT publishes tiers at $5.80, $10.80 and $25.00 a month billed annually, with the top tier advertising the full model set. Lorka sits around $30 and bundles writing, images, video and voice rather than chat alone. Both pay me a commission; neither is something I use every day.
The arithmetic that matters:
Against two subscriptions at €40, an aggregator wins. Against one at €20, the cheapest tier wins on price and the question becomes what you give up. Against one at €20 where you then keep the €20 — which is what usually happens — you have spent more for the privilege of having more tabs.
And ignore the savings figure on their own page. GlobalGPT's advertises saving $1,233 a month against $1,282 of separate subscriptions, arrived at by adding up the list price of every service in the bundle. Nobody buys all of that. The comparison is against a person who does not exist.
Three things to check before subscribing, in this order:
- Which models are in the tier you would actually buy — not the headline tier. Cheaper tiers commonly exclude the newest models, which are usually why you wanted access.
- How fast new models arrive. Direct is launch day. Through a layer it varies, and sometimes it is never.
- Whether you will genuinely cancel the thing it replaces. If you will not, the saving is zero and the cost is positive.
When is paying per use cheaper?
When your usage is lumpy.
Z.ai (GLM) and WaveSpeedAI charge for what you consume instead of monthly. A week of heavy work and three quiet weeks costs far less this way than a flat fee. Daily chat use is the opposite case: a subscription is effectively unlimited, and per-token spending is hard to predict until a month has gone by.
WaveSpeedAI publishes per-unit rates — around $0.005–0.008 per image and $0.01–0.15 per second of video at the time of writing, with $1 of free credit to test. For Z.ai I could not find published figures on a page I can point you at, so price your specific model at your expected volume before moving anything.
What do the free tiers actually cover?
More than people assume, and this is the option nobody sells you.
Every major assistant has a free tier that handles ordinary questions, with limits on volume and on access to the newest models. Pi has one too and is built around conversation rather than tasks.
The test that settles it: cancel for one month. Keep a note each time you hit a limit and genuinely needed more. Fewer than five entries and you were paying for availability rather than use — which is a perfectly rational thing to buy, but you should know that is what you are buying.
What does each route cost?
Prices checked 23 September 2026 and quoted in the currency each vendor charges.
| Route | Cost | Pays me |
|---|---|---|
| Direct (Claude and equivalents) | ~€20/mo | no |
| Aggregator (GlobalGPT) | $5.80–$25.00/mo, billed yearly | yes |
| Aggregator (Lorka) | ~$30/mo | yes |
| Pay per use (WaveSpeedAI) | from ~$0.005/image | yes |
| Free tiers | €0 | no |
The side-by-side of the paid routes is in how to pay for AI models, and the fuller version of this arithmetic is in the cheapest way to use Claude, GPT and Gemini.
When should you keep what you have?
Three cases, and they cover most people:
- You open it every day. At €20 a month, a tool you use daily is among the cheapest things in a one-person business. The hour you spend researching alternatives costs more than the saving.
- You depend on something specific to that product — a feature, an integration, a way of working you have built around. Switching to save €10 and losing the thing you actually use is not a saving.
- You would keep both. Be honest about this one. If you know you will not cancel, the aggregator is an addition and the maths is not close.
The version of this advice that nobody gives: the cheapest subscription is the second one you cancel, not the first one you replace.
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Tools in this piece
| Tool | What it does | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Claude | The assistant itself. Strong on long text, code, and following instructions exactly. | ~€20/mo |
| GlobalGPT | Chat, image, video, audio, search and agents from several leading models under one subscription. | From ~$5.80/mo (yearly) |
| Lorka | One subscription covering writing, images, video and voice instead of five. | ~$30/mo |
| Z.ai (GLM) | Access to the GLM model family with credits for developers and builders. | Credits, pay as you go |
| Pi | AI presentation generator — paste the content, get a designed deck back. | Free tier, then paid |
| WaveSpeedAI | Fast inference for image and video models, priced per run. | Per use, from ~$0.005/image |
| Claude Code | An AI agent in your terminal that reads your files, edits them, runs commands and deploys. | ~€17–20/mo |
Every tool has its own page with the price, who should skip it and what to check before paying. Some links are affiliate links.
Questions people ask
What are the alternatives to ChatGPT Plus?
Four routes. A different direct subscription at a similar price, an aggregator that bundles several models into one fee, pay-per-token API access, or the free tiers, which are more capable than most people assume. Which is right depends on whether you want a different model, several models, or a smaller bill.
Is there a cheaper alternative to ChatGPT Plus?
Aggregators start lower — one published tier runs around $5.80 a month billed annually, against roughly €20 for a direct subscription. The saving is real only if the models you actually use are included at that tier, which is the thing to check before subscribing rather than after.
Can you get the same thing for free?
Largely, for occasional use. The free tiers of the major assistants handle most everyday questions, with limits on volume and on the newest models. If you use an assistant a few times a week rather than a few times an hour, paying may be buying you nothing.
Is an aggregator subscription as good as the real thing?
It depends on which models it includes at your tier and how quickly new ones arrive. Direct means launch day. Through a middle layer it can be weeks, and some top-tier models never appear at the cheaper tiers at all.
When should you keep paying for ChatGPT Plus?
When you use it daily, when the specific features you rely on are tied to that product, and when switching would cost more hours than the saving is worth. A subscription you open every morning at €20 a month is one of the cheapest tools in a one-person business.