ChatGPT Pro review: A useful bundle of AI tools, but way overpriced
ChatGPT Pro vs. Claude with Perplexity, Midjourney, ElevenLabs, and Kling
OpenAI is the most famous of AI companies, but it’s far from the only one. Its many competitors include DeepSeek, Anthropic, Midjourney, ElevenLabs, Meta, and Google to name a few.
Which raises the question: If ChatGPT Pro is so dang expensive, how does it compare to the competition? Well, the $200/month spent on ChatGPT Pro would actually be enough to cover the monthly plans for several different AI alternatives, spreading the cost across multiple.
For this review, I tried ChatGPT Pro against five alternative services:
- Anthropic Claude Pro (AI chatbot) — $20/month
- Perplexity Pro (web search) — $20/month
- Midjourney Standard (image generation) — $30/month
- Kling AI Pro (video generation) — $25/month
- ElevenLabs Creator (speech-to-text/text-to-speech) — $22/month
- Total cost — $117/month
Choosing a suite of competitive AI services with capabilities similar to ChatGPT Pro certainly looks appealing on paper. The total cost is nearly half the price, a steep discount compared to ChatGPT Pro.
Matt Smith / Foundry
This à la carte approach arguably provides access to a better selection of AI services, too. Coders generally prefer Claude over ChatGPT while Perplexity is better for web search than ChatGPT’s built-in search, for example. Creatives hugely prefer Midjourney’s image generation model to Dall-E, and Kling AI’s titular video models are often recommended over Sora. ElevenLabs, meanwhile, offers speech-to-text and text-to-speech capabilities that ChatGPT doesn’t even provide.
On the other hand, ChatGPT Pro offers some features that competitive services don’t emulate. Claude doesn’t offer alternatives to Deep Research or Operator. ElevenLabs’ text-to-speech and speech-to-text are useful but not the same as ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice. And while a variety of AI agents exist, no competitor offers a simple, ready-to-use AI agent like OpenAI’s Operator.
This comparison between ChatGPT Pro and a suite of alternative services shows an important point: if you’re subscribing to ChatGPT Pro, it’s likely for access to features that are exclusive to ChatGPT Pro (or rate limited in such a way that they’re only useful with ChatGPT Pro).
In that case, we need to dive into those exclusive ChatGPT Pro features and evaluate them for value. Are they worth it? Let’s find out.
