ChatGPT Plus vs Claude Pro: €19.01 or €18 Before Tax

Short answer. In Spain, ChatGPT Plus costs €23 a month including VAT, or €19.01 before VAT. Claude Pro costs €18 a month before tax, or €15 a month billed yearly (€180 up front). Both pages were read by hand on October 17, 2026. In the United States, Claude Pro is $20 a month.

In plain words. Before tax, Claude Pro is the cheaper of the two in Spain. ChatGPT shows its price with VAT included. Claude shows it without. So compare €19.01 with €18, not €23 with €18. Paying Claude for a year up front lowers it to €15 a month.

ChatGPT Plus and Claude Pro are the two plans most people mean when they say they “pay for an AI”. Both makers sell them in Spain in euros, but they do not print the same kind of price: OpenAI’s window shows a figure that includes Spanish VAT and says how much of it is VAT, while Anthropic’s page shows a figure before tax. This post lines the two up on the same footing, before tax, using only what each page printed when it was read by hand from Spain on October 17, 2026, and adds Claude’s United States price, read by a script from Anthropic’s US page on the same day. Every figure links back to the ChatGPT and Claude subscription pages of this site, where each one is quoted in full.

The two prices as printed

OpenAI’s plan window, signed in, “Personal” tab, read in Spanish:

Plus … €23 / mes (incluye 3,99 € de IVA)

Anthropic’s Spanish pricing page, claude.com/es/pricing:

Pro … 15 € Por mes con descuento de suscripción anual (180 € facturado por adelantado). 18 € si se factura mensualmente.

and, at the foot of the same page, “Los precios mostrados no incluyen impuestos aplicables.” (prices shown do not include applicable tax).

So the €23 is a price with tax and the €18 is a price without it. Set side by side as printed, they are not the same kind of number.

On the same footing: before tax

OpenAI states the VAT inside its own price, so it can be taken out without guessing a rate: €23.00 minus €3.99 is €19.01 a month before VAT. Anthropic’s €18 is already before tax. This site does not add Spanish VAT to Anthropic’s figure: the page does not print it, and working it out would mean assuming a rate the page never states.

Before tax, the monthly gap is €1.01 a month in Claude’s favour; with Claude’s yearly billing it is €4.01 a month. OpenAI’s Personal tab, as captured, offers ChatGPT Plus only month to month: it shows no yearly option for Plus.

A year of each

Neither page prints a yearly total for paying month to month, so the figures below are this site’s arithmetic on the monthly prices, twelve payments at the October 17 price:

The €180 is the only yearly figure either page prints. Paid month by month, Claude Pro costs €36 more over the year than its own yearly plan. Against ChatGPT Plus before VAT, the yearly plan is €48.12 cheaper over twelve months; paying Claude monthly, the difference is €12.12.

Claude Pro in the United States

Anthropic’s US page prints “$17 Per month with annual subscription discount ( $200 billed up front). $20 if billed monthly.” and “Prices shown don’t include applicable tax.” Two details are worth noting. The yearly charge is $200, which is $16.67 a month; the page rounds it to $17. The Spanish page’s €180 is exactly twelve times €15, so there is no rounding there. This site does not set dollars against euros, so it does not say which country pays more: the two prices come from two pages for two markets, and no exchange rate is applied.

Update, October 26, 2026: OpenAI’s Codex pricing page, learn.chatgpt.com/docs/pricing, lists the ChatGPT plans that include Codex and prints “$20 /month” for Plus, read by a script on October 19 and October 26, 2026. Anthropic’s US page, read again on October 26, still prints “$20 if billed monthly.” for Claude Pro. The paragraph below no longer holds.

This site has no reading of ChatGPT Plus in US dollars: OpenAI’s pricing window refuses scripted clients, and the only reading so far was made by hand from Spain. Until a US reading exists, no dollar price for ChatGPT Plus is published here.

What each plan includes

Both lists are quoted from the pages as they were shown in Spain, in Spanish, not translated. ChatGPT Plus lists, among others:

• “Inteligencia avanzada para tareas complejas”
• “Agente Work para realizar acciones en aplicaciones y archivos”
• “Codex para automatizar la programación”
• “Memoria ampliada y 20 GB de almacenamiento”
• “Conexiones con el correo electrónico y el calendario”
• “Sin anuncios”

Claude Pro lists “Todo lo de Free, más:” and then:

• “Más uso*”
• “Delega y programa tareas”
• “Claude Code”
• “Proyectos”
• “Más modelos de Claude”
• “Claude in Chrome y Microsoft 365”

Each maker names its own coding tool in the plan, Codex for OpenAI and Claude Code for Anthropic. OpenAI names a storage figure, 20 GB; Anthropic’s list names none. Anthropic’s US page states the usage allowance in numbers: “Pro gives you at least 5x more usage per 5-hour session than Free.” OpenAI’s Personal tab gives no comparable figure for Plus. Neither list is a measure of quality, and this post does not rank the two on features.

The next plan up: ChatGPT Pro and Claude Max

Both makers sell a much larger plan, and both print it as a starting price:

Before tax, ChatGPT Pro starts €4.88 a month below Claude Max. OpenAI says Pro is “Disponible en 3 niveles de uso” and prints only the starting one; Anthropic says Max lets you “Elige 5x o 20x más uso que Pro*” and also prints only the starting price. In the United States, Anthropic prints “From $100 Per month” for Max.

The subscription and the API

A subscription is a flat monthly fee with usage limits; the API bills every token. The Claude Max list on the Spanish page includes “$100 a $200/mes en créditos de API para desarrollar en la plataforma Claude†”, a dollar allowance printed on a euro page. ChatGPT Plus and Pro, as captured, mention no API credit.

In US dollars only, so no currency is converted: the $20 of one month of Claude Pro in the United States buys 2 million input tokens of Claude Fable 5.1 at $10.00 per million, or 200 million of Claude Haiku 5.5 at $0.10, before any output token. Every Anthropic and OpenAI API price is on Claude API pricing and GPT API pricing.

How this was read

ChatGPT’s prices come from OpenAI’s plan window at chatgpt.com, signed in, read by hand on October 17, 2026, from Spain, because the page refuses scripted clients. Claude’s Spanish prices come from claude.com/es/pricing, also read by hand on October 17, 2026, from Spain; its US prices come from claude.com/pricing, read the same day by a script. The pages were shown in Spanish and the quotes keep that language. Prices change: the AI subscriptions page lists every plan with the day it was last checked.

Frequently asked questions

How much is ChatGPT Plus in Spain before VAT?

€19.01 a month: the page prints €23 a month including €3.99 of VAT, read by hand from Spain on October 17, 2026. Subtracting the VAT the page itself declares gives €19.01.

How much does Claude Pro cost in Spain?

€18 a month billed monthly, or €15 a month billed yearly with €180 paid up front, before tax, on claude.com/es/pricing read on October 17, 2026. In the United States it is $20 a month, or $17 a month with $200 billed up front.

Which is cheaper over a year in Spain?

Before tax, twelve months of ChatGPT Plus come to €228.12 and Claude Pro's yearly plan to €180, or €216 paid month by month. Neither page prints a yearly total for ChatGPT Plus; the €228.12 is twelve times the monthly price before VAT.