ChatGPT Enterprise pricing is not published: OpenAI lists Enterprise as custom pricing through its sales team, billed on credits or tokens. ChatGPT Business, the self-serve plan, costs $20 per user per month billed annually or $25 billed monthly for a Standard seat, with a 2-seat minimum and a 200-seat cap for new subscriptions (list, verified October 2026).
ChatGPT list prices in October 2026
OpenAI publishes prices for its individual and Business plans and sends Enterprise buyers to its sales team. For company use, these are the lines that matter:
| Plan | List price (verified October 2026) | Seats | What the price covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business, Standard seat | $20 per user per month billed annually; $25 billed monthly | 2 to 200 per workspace | ChatGPT, ChatGPT Work and Codex within included usage limits |
| Business, Premium seat | $100 per user per month billed annually; $125 billed monthly | Counts toward the same 200 | Five times the Standard usage, with no five-hour usage limit |
| Enterprise | Custom pricing through OpenAI sales | Set by contract | Credit-based or token-based billing, volume discounts and invoicing |
| API Platform | Usage-based | Not seat-based | Billed separately and not included in Business |
OpenAI quotes these prices in US dollars for most countries and says they vary by country and currency. Checked from Sweden, the pricing page showed the Standard seat at SEK 180 per user per month billed annually and SEK 220 billed monthly. The 200-seat cap applies to subscriptions started from 24 August 2026, and older workspaces keep their previous limit. Nonprofits can get up to 75% off Business or Enterprise through OpenAI for Nonprofits.
Why expensing ChatGPT Plus is not a company plan
ChatGPT Plus costs $20 a month, billed monthly only, which matches a Business seat on annual billing (list, verified October 2026). Letting staff expense it looks like a shortcut. OpenAI’s plan comparison shows why it is not one:
- No company control. Plus has no admin console and no SAML single sign-on, so the company cannot see, retain or delete what staff do in it.
- Training is on by default. Conversations can be used to improve OpenAI’s models unless each person opts out in their own settings.
- The account belongs to the employee. The chats, files and custom GPTs stay with the person, including after they leave.
A Business workspace billed annually costs the same per seat and gives admins the console, single sign-on and a no-training default, which is why the comparisons below start from Business.
What ChatGPT Enterprise adds over Business
What Enterprise buys over Business is mostly controls. OpenAI’s plan comparison splits them like this:
| Control | Business | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|
| SAML single sign-on | Yes | Yes |
| SCIM user provisioning | No | Yes |
| Role-based access controls | No | Yes |
| Enterprise key management | No | Yes |
| IP allowlisting | No | Yes |
| Compliance API logs platform | No | Yes |
| Data residency in ten regions | No | Yes |
| SOC 2 Type 2 | Yes | Yes |
| ISO 27001, 27017, 27018 and 27701 | No | Yes |
| Training on your business data | Not by default | Not by default |
Enterprise also comes with custom data retention policies, SLAs, custom legal terms and 24/7 priority support, and OpenAI includes data residency on Enterprise at no extra cost. For Business, OpenAI is rolling out a storage-region option gradually. If your security review requires SCIM, role-based access or audit logs, the real comparison is with an Enterprise quote, whatever Business costs. What each plan does with your prompts and files is covered in our explainer on ChatGPT and confidential data.
Seat costs at 50, 200 and 1,000 users
The table multiplies list prices by 12 months. It leaves out taxes, extra usage credits and any discount you negotiate.
| Plan (list, verified October 2026) | Per user per month | 50 users, 12 months | 200 users, 12 months | 1,000 users, 12 months |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT Business Standard, billed annually | $20 | $12,000 | $48,000 | Not offered: 200-seat cap |
| ChatGPT Business Standard, billed monthly | $25 | $15,000 | $60,000 | Not offered: 200-seat cap |
| ChatGPT Business Premium, billed annually | $100 | $60,000 | $240,000 | Not offered: 200-seat cap |
| ChatGPT Enterprise | Custom | Quote | Quote | Quote |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot, paid yearly | $30 | $18,000 | $72,000 | $360,000 |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot Business, paid yearly | $21 | $12,600 | $50,400 | Not offered: 300-user cap |
How to read it:
- Past 200 seats, ChatGPT means Enterprise. A company with 250 staff is already over the Business cap, so above 200 seats the ChatGPT figure is whatever an Enterprise quote says.
- Copilot sits on a Microsoft 365 plan. Microsoft 365 Copilot needs a qualifying Microsoft 365 plan, which the table does not include. Paying monthly on the annual commitment costs $31.50 per user per month.
- Copilot Business has a promotion. It is an add-on for existing Microsoft 365 business customers, for up to 300 users. Annual subscriptions bought between 1 July and 31 December 2026 pay $18 per user per month for the first year; the table uses the $21 list price. Monthly billing is $25.20.
- The name is changing. Microsoft’s documentation now calls the product Microsoft Copilot, while its pricing pages still say Microsoft 365 Copilot (verified October 2026).
Mixed seats change the total quickly. A 150-person company with 120 Standard and 30 Premium seats on annual billing pays 120 × $240 plus 30 × $1,200, which is $64,800 a year at list, against $36,000 if everyone had a Standard seat.
If Microsoft is the incumbent, the Copilot alternatives page compares the options beyond these two SKUs.
Which plans a company of your size can buy
Seat caps decide which price lists apply before any negotiation starts:
| Users | ChatGPT options (list, verified October 2026) | Microsoft options (list, verified October 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| 2 to 200 | Business at $20 per user per month billed annually, or an Enterprise quote | Copilot Business at $21 on a Microsoft 365 business plan; Microsoft 365 Copilot at $30 on an enterprise plan |
| 201 to 300 | Enterprise quote only | Same as for 2 to 200 users |
| More than 300 | Enterprise quote only | Microsoft 365 Copilot at $30 on an enterprise plan |
Microsoft 365 business plans stop at 300 users, and Copilot Business stops with them. A private deployment does not follow these bands at all. It is sized for how many people use it at the same moment, and of the three it is the only one that can serve data that may not leave your network.
Costs the seat price leaves out
- Usage above included limits. Business seats and credit-based Enterprise seats include baseline usage. Beyond it, workspaces buy credits at OpenAI’s rate card, and heavy users may need Premium seats at five times the Standard price.
- Developer usage. Anything your teams build on OpenAI models runs on the API Platform and is billed there, separately from ChatGPT seats.
- Prerequisite licences and metering. Copilot sits on top of a Microsoft 365 plan, and Microsoft describes agent use in Copilot Chat as metered.
- Rollout work. Security review, admin setup, data classification, staff training and an acceptable-use policy are needed whichever vendor you pick.
- Headcount growth. Every new hire who needs the assistant adds a seat for as long as they stay.
What drives the cost of a private deployment
A private assistant runs on hardware you own or lease, so its costs follow capacity. The main drivers:
- GPU servers. The model you choose and the number of people asking at the same moment set how many GPUs you need. As a reference point, OpenAI’s model card says its open-weight gpt-oss-120b fits on a single 80 GB GPU.
- Power, cooling and rack space. GPU servers add to the data-centre bill for as long as they run.
- Operations staff. People to patch, monitor, upgrade models and keep the service available, often as a share of an existing platform team’s time.
- Software licence and support. For the platform, if you buy one, and support for any open-source components you run.
- Utilisation. Hardware costs the same whether it is busy or idle, so the cost per user depends on how much of the capacity people actually use.
Our on-prem TCO comparison works through hardware, power and staffing over several years. The point here is narrower. Seat plans scale with the number of people; a private deployment scales with how much they use it at once.
How to compare the two on equal terms
- Count active users. Use weekly active users from a pilot or from proxy logs, never total headcount.
- Price the controls you need. If your review requires SCIM, role-based access, audit logs or data residency, compare against an Enterprise quote, not Business list prices.
- Get the Enterprise billing model in writing. Ask whether you pay per seat, in credits or in tokens, what usage is included and what overage costs.
- Size private capacity from concurrency. Plan GPUs for peak simultaneous use, and count operations staff at a realistic share of their time.
- Use the same horizon. Compare three years of seats with three years of hardware, licences, power and staff.
- Separate the data that cannot leave. Data that may not go to a cloud processor at all cannot be served by a seat plan at any price, so only the rest belongs in the cost comparison.
Building versus buying is covered in three routes to an internal ChatGPT, and the private ChatGPT for business page sets out the migration path.
How VDF AI fits
VDF AI runs assistants and agents on your own infrastructure, so the private-deployment cost drivers above apply to it. VDF AI Router picks a model for each request across local and approved cloud models, which lets routine requests run on smaller models and keeps the largest ones for harder work. In air-gapped mode it routes to local models only. For licensing, see current pricing.
Sources
- OpenAI, ChatGPT pricing and plan comparison
- OpenAI, ChatGPT Business overview
- OpenAI, ChatGPT Business general FAQ
- OpenAI, what ChatGPT Enterprise includes
- OpenAI, what ChatGPT Plus includes
- OpenAI, data residency for ChatGPT
- Microsoft, Microsoft 365 Copilot for enterprise
- Microsoft, Microsoft 365 Copilot Business
- Microsoft Learn, Copilot data, privacy and security
- OpenAI gpt-oss-120b model card