Quick answer: If your office writes emails, reviews the occasional document, and does light research, ChatGPT Business ($25/user/month) is the safest place to start. It runs on phones and computers, shares chat history across your team, and does not force you to buy five seats just to get in the door.

That is the short version. The real answer depends on what your team actually does. Here is a rundown of what each tool is good at — and where it wastes your time.

What is each tool, in one sentence?

ChatGPT (OpenAI). A chat app that does pretty well at emails, summaries, and brainstorming.
Gemini (Google). The AI built into Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. Already there if you use Google Workspace.
Grok (xAI). Built by Elon Musk’s team. Advertises real-time search — answers from today, not last year.
Claude (Anthropic). People use it for reading long documents and pulling out key points.
Copilot (GitHub). A coding assistant. Only useful if someone on your team writes code or spreadsheet formulas.
Perplexity. A search engine with an AI summary. Cites its sources so you can check them.

Pricing, in dollars you can budget

These are the rates as of mid-2026:

Tool	Plan	Price per user	Minimum users	Billing
ChatGPT	Business	$25/month	None	Monthly or annual
Gemini	Google Workspace Business	~$14/month	None	Included in Workspace
Grok	Business	$30/month	None	Monthly or annual
Claude	Team	$25/month	2–5 (varies)	Annual required
Copilot	Business	$19/month	None	Monthly
Perplexity	Enterprise Pro	~$30/month	None	Annual required

A few things to know about what the pricing pages do not say upfront:

ChatGPT Business at $25 is the most straightforward. No usage tiers, no surprise add-ons.
Gemini comes with Google Workspace Business. If you are already paying $14 a user for Business Standard, the AI is free.
Grok at $30 is the most expensive plan. It includes real-time search and X (formerly Twitter) integration, which some sales teams use.
Claude requires a minimum of 5 users and annual billing. That is $1,500 upfront before you know if it works.
Copilot at $19 is the cheapest, but useless if nobody writes code.
Perplexity Enterprise runs about $30 a user when billed annually. Overkill if you just need help writing emails.

For a 5-person office, monthly costs range from $95 (Copilot only) to $150 (Grok for everyone). For a solo owner, it is $19 to $30 a month for one seat.

Where each tool actually helps

ChatGPT: Good at most things, great at none

Handles emails, summaries, basic image generation, and light brainstorming. If you share a workspace, your team stops losing prompts in random browser tabs. The mobile app works well.

It is terrible at long documents. Upload a 50-page PDF and it will skim the first and last pages and miss the stuff in the middle. It also has a knowledge cutoff, so it will confidently tell you something that was true six months ago and is now wrong.

If your team goes heavy, you may hit usage limits and have to pay more. But for moderate use, $25 a user is fine.

Gemini: Convenient if you are already on Google

Lives inside Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. Turn it on in Admin Console and every user gets AI in their email and documents. No extra logins, no extra bills.

It writes decent copy and summarizes adequately. The problem is it is not distinctive — it is fine for offices that just need “good enough.”

Its web search cites sources poorly. You cannot always tell whether an answer came from a credible site or a random forum post from 2012.

Grok: Real-time search, casual tone

Ask it what happened at an industry conference last week and it can tell you. Ask ChatGPT the same thing and it will tell you what happened last year with confidence. For retail, marketing, or consulting businesses tracking trends, that freshness matters.

The business plan connects to Google Drive, which is useful. But the integration is new and rough.

Grok’s tone trends irreverent and informal. Great for brainstorming. Bad for drafting contract amendments or formal client letters.

Claude: The document reader

Upload a 100-page contract and ask it to extract key terms, flag auto-renewal clauses, and summarize termination conditions. Claude does this. ChatGPT and Gemini give you a summary; Claude reads it the way a second set of eyes would.

Claude’s writing is careful. It hedges when it should, and it is less likely to confidently state something false. That makes it safer for legal or financial work. It also makes it annoyingly slow for simple questions — ask it to write a quick email and it will give you a five-paragraph response.

At $25 per user per month with a 5-seat minimum, Claude costs $1,500 a year. Buy seats for the two people who actually read the big documents, not the whole team.

Copilot: Only if you write code

GitHub Copilot Business is $19 per user. It pays off if someone on your team writes code, VBA macros, or Google Sheets formulas. If nobody touches code, it is useless.

Even then, “touches code” means different things. If your bookkeeper writes Excel macros or your operations manager builds formulas in Sheets, Copilot can save them hours by auto-completing functions. If your team only writes Word docs and emails, skip it.

Perplexity: The researcher

Ask a question and it finds answers with numbered sources you can click. Good for market research, competitor analysis, and checking whether that claim in a proposal is real.

Perplexity is the best at staying current. Its answers reflect what is on the web today. For businesses in fast-moving industries — tech, finance, marketing — that freshness matters.

It is expensive relative to what it does. At $20 a month for individuals and around $30 for enterprise, it is the priciest research tool, and it is narrow. Perplexity cannot help you write a better email — it will search the web for “follow-up email” instead of just writing one.

What happened when I tested each tool

I gave all six tools three tasks that matter to small business owners:

1. Draft a client follow-up email after a pricing proposal.

ChatGPT: Polished, professional, three variations. Good starting point.
Gemini: Similar quality, slightly less punch.
Grok: Too casual — sounded like a text message.
Claude: Over-formal and wordy. Needed trimming.
Copilot: Useless — kept asking for code snippets.
Perplexity: Could not draft an email at all. Searched the web for “follow-up email” instead.

Winner: ChatGPT, for versatility and tone.

2. Summarize a 42-page vendor contract PDF.

Claude: Extracted key terms, flagged auto-renewal clauses, summarized termination conditions. Clearly read every page.
ChatGPT: Good summary but missed a $500 early-termination fee in section 12.
Gemini: Basic high-level summary, missed most of the fine print.
Grok: Invented terms that were not in the document.
Copilot: Could not handle the PDF.
Perplexity: Refused to summarize, just linked to contract law articles.

Winner: Claude, by a wide margin.

3. Research current trends in small business cybersecurity.

Perplexity: Best and freshest answers, with sources you can click.
Grok: Strong second — current events focus helped.
ChatGPT: Outdated information, though it organized the content well.
Claude: Good but slow, and it hedged everything.
Gemini: Decent but cited low-quality sources.
Copilot: Useless.

Winner: Perplexity. Grok as a cheaper alternative if you cannot justify Perplexity’s price.

What should your small business actually buy?

You probably need two tools, not one. Start with ChatGPT Business at $25 per user per month. It covers emails, summaries, basic image generation, light brainstorming, and the occasional code fix. At $25 a head with no minimum, a 5-person team pays $125 a month.

Then add a second tool only if you have a specific need:

Lots of long documents (contracts, proposals, employee handbooks): Add Claude for $25/user/month with a 5-seat minimum. Buy seats for the two people who read the big documents, not the whole team. Justified if Claude saves one person four billable hours a month.
Market research, competitive analysis, trend tracking: Add Perplexity for $20/month. Give it to whoever does your research. You likely only need one seat.
Already on Google Workspace: Use Gemini (no extra cost) plus Perplexity for research. Total: ~$34/month.
Team writes code, Excel macros, or Sheets formulas: Add Copilot at $19/month for those users. It pays for itself quickly if someone spends more than two hours a week writing or fixing code.
Skip Grok unless your team actively uses X (formerly Twitter) for business or you need real-time search frequently enough to justify $30 instead of $25 for the same general capabilities as ChatGPT.

A few things I wish someone had told me

I have watched small business owners spend $300 a month on subscriptions their team uses twice a week. The key is matching the tool to the work, not chasing the shiniest demo.

Start small. Buy one seat of ChatGPT, give it to whoever writes the most emails, and see what happens. Most offices find it pays for itself in time saved within weeks.

Do not buy everything. Having six AI tools that nobody remembers how to use is worse than having one tool everyone actually reaches for.

The landscape is still changing. Google is bundling AI into Workspace whether you want it or not. OpenAI is raising prices. xAI is adding features weekly. Perplexity just launched an entire computer-use agent that did not exist six months ago. What is true today may not be true next quarter.

Your data matters. If you are drafting client contracts or handling anything sensitive, use the business or enterprise plans only. Free versions of these tools may use your conversations to train their models.

For most small offices, the answer is simple: ChatGPT Business at $25 a month per user, with Claude added if you read a lot of documents. That covers your bases without overcomplicating things.

AI assistants are not going to transform your business overnight. They are expensive calculators that save time on tedious stuff. Use them for that, and you will come out ahead.

All pricing data verified against vendor websites (chatgpt.com, claude.com, x.ai, github.com, perplexity.ai, workspace.google.com) in August 2026. Prices are subject to change.

ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Claude, Copilot, and Perplexity: Which AI Assistant Is Right for Your Small Business?