For a team building AI agents, James McAulay's pick is Claude, which he rates the strongest agent toolkit right now. Up to 150 people, price won't decide it: Claude Team and ChatGPT Business both charge £15 a month before VAT for a standard seat and £75 for a premium one, paid yearly. Above 150, only ChatGPT Business stays self-serve (to 200). Choose ChatGPT if you need your data stored in the UK or images generated.
If you already pay for one and doubt it, or half your company uses each, this is how to choose between them. Every price is per person a month, before VAT, and paid yearly unless it says otherwise.
How much do Claude Team and ChatGPT Business cost?
They cost the same: £15 for a standard seat and £75 for a premium seat, paid yearly.
| Before VAT, per person a month | Claude Team | ChatGPT Business |
|---|---|---|
| Standard seat, paid yearly | £15 | £15 |
| Standard seat, paid monthly | £18.75 | £18 |
| Premium seat, paid yearly | £75 | £75 |
| Premium seat, paid monthly | £94.17 | £90 |
| Team size | 2 to 150 people | 2 to 200 people |
In dollars both are $20 and $100 a month paid yearly, $25 and $125 paid monthly. Sources: Anthropic and OpenAI, dollars checked 12 November 2026, pounds in late October 2026. Anthropic's UK page includes 20% VAT (£18 for a standard seat), so we've taken it off to compare like with like.
A premium seat gives five times a standard seat's usage on Claude, and five times the agent and coding usage on ChatGPT, where it also lifts the limit that resets every five hours. Give premium seats to the people who build agents or work in the tool all day. The Claude budget guide puts that at about 40% of a company.
What does a team of 20 to 300 people pay?
Up to 150 people, Claude Team and ChatGPT Business cost the same. Claude Enterprise can cost a little less than Team seats when people use it lightly, and about a third more than Team with every extra-usage limit used when they use it heavily.
These figures use the budget guide's mix: 40% of people on premium seats (builders and people who work in the tool all day), 60% on standard seats, and developers in Claude Code making up 5% of the company. Monthly, before VAT:
| Team size | Team or Business seats | Claude Team, every limit used |
|---|---|---|
| 20 people | £780 | £1,195 |
| 60 people | £2,340 | £3,585 |
| 150 people | £5,850 | £8,962 |
| 300 people | Enterprise only | Enterprise only |
The seat price is the least you pay. When someone uses up their seat's allowance, Claude Team bills extra usage at API rates, up to a limit an admin sets per person. The last column uses the budget guide's limits at their highest: $250 for each developer and $25 for each standard seat. ChatGPT Business sells extra usage as workspace credits, but OpenAI doesn't publish what they cost, so we can't price it.
Claude Enterprise has no seat allowance. It charges $20 a seat, from 20 seats bought online, and bills every bit of usage on top at Anthropic's API rates, so the bill depends on how much your team uses it. Monthly, before VAT:
| Claude Enterprise | Light | Regular | Heavy |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20 people | £739 | £951 | £1,614 |
| 60 people | £2,218 | £2,852 | £4,843 |
| 150 people | £5,545 | £7,129 | £12,108 |
| 300 people | £11,090 | £14,258 | £24,216 |
The usage figures come from our Claude Enterprise calculator: a month of Claude Code costs $100, $200 or $600 for each developer at light, regular and heavy use, and other work $5, $20 or $60 a person. We've put the people who'd have premium seats on Team at $60 throughout. For 60 people at regular use, that's 60 seats at $20, plus 3 developers at $200, 21 premium-seat people at $60 and 36 others at $20: $3,780, or £2,852 at $1 = £0.7544 (ECB rate, 12 November 2026).
ChatGPT Enterprise has no published price. OpenAI quotes it through sales and bills usage from a shared pool of credits whose price it doesn't publish. Third parties report $45 to $75 a seat a month with a 150-seat minimum, which would make the seats alone £5,092 to £8,487 at 150 people and £10,184 to £16,974 at 300, before any usage. OpenAI confirms neither figure, and one analysis traces the $60 figure most often quoted to a single 2023 Reddit post, so get a quote before you plan on it.
Enterprise is the plan for SCIM and audit logs. Between 20 and 150 people it only comes out cheaper than Team's seats when use stays light, and then by about 5%. Above 150 people on Claude, it's the only plan.
How do Claude and ChatGPT differ for a business?
Both have an agent for everyday work and a coding agent, so the practical differences are image generation, usage limits, pricing and, on Enterprise, where your data is stored:
| Claude | ChatGPT | |
|---|---|---|
| Everyday agent | Cowork, part of Claude's normal chat since September 2026 | ChatGPT Work and workspace agents |
| Coding agent | Claude Code, on every Team seat | Codex |
| Standard seat limits | A five-hour limit and a weekly one | A five-hour limit, plus weekly caps on some models |
| Image generation | No: charts and diagrams only | Yes |
| Largest self-serve team | 150 people | 200 people |
| Enterprise price | Published: $20 a seat plus usage | Quote only |
Both business plans include connectors to your other tools, single sign-on, and no training on your work by default.
Do Claude Enterprise and ChatGPT Enterprise have the same security controls?
Nearly: both have SCIM, audit logs, a compliance API, custom data retention, customer-managed encryption keys, IP allowlisting and a HIPAA option, but only ChatGPT Enterprise can store your data in the UK.
| Claude Enterprise | ChatGPT Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|
| Data stored in the UK | No | Yes, one of ten storage regions |
| Data processed in one region | US only, as an option | EEA, US or UAE, not the UK |
| HIPAA | HIPAA-ready plan with a BAA | BAA with a Regulated Workspace |
Sources: Anthropic's Enterprise plan, Anthropic's data residency, OpenAI's data residency and OpenAI's plan comparison, all read 12 November 2026.
On the self-serve plans, Claude Team has single sign-on but none of these controls. ChatGPT Business has single sign-on but no SCIM, key management, IP allowlisting or data residency.
Is Claude better than ChatGPT for business?
For building agents, yes. James McAulay has trained 700+ people from 250+ companies to build agents. He teaches in Claude, ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, and rates Claude the strongest toolkit for agents right now.
Most of the teams he trains learn on Claude, including Claude Code, and he wants everyone in Claude Code, engineers or not. Cowork helps too: since September 2026 it's part of Claude's ordinary chat, so agent work happens in a normal conversation.
When is ChatGPT the better choice for a business?
ChatGPT is the better choice when you need something Claude doesn't offer:
- Your data has to be stored in the UK. Only ChatGPT Enterprise does that today.
- Your team makes pictures as part of the job. ChatGPT generates them, and Claude doesn't.
- You have 151 to 200 people and want a self-serve plan. ChatGPT Business goes to 200, while Claude needs Enterprise above 150.
- Your team has already built agents in ChatGPT and they work. Moving them will probably cost more than you'd gain.
Should you just use Microsoft Copilot instead?
Only if you want AI inside Word, Outlook and Teams more than you want people building agents. Microsoft 365 Copilot is an add-on at £16.10 a user a month on Business plans, paid yearly and before VAT (£13.80 for the first year if bought by 31 December 2026), or £23.10 on enterprise plans. It can use Claude models in Researcher and Copilot Studio, but for UK firms Microsoft switches Claude off by default and keeps it outside its in-country processing commitments. The Copilot pricing calculator prices it for your team.
Should a company pay for both Claude and ChatGPT?
Only to check important work: put everyone on the tool your builders use and keep a few standard seats on the other for second opinions. A model checking its own work shares its blind spots, so James's course teaches using a second model on the work that matters. Five ChatGPT standard seats for that cost £75 a month. For a 60-person company, a standard seat for everyone on both tools would cost £1,800 a month instead of £900.
Switching costs less if the context your AI needs about your work lives in files rather than in chat history. Ben Robson had used ChatGPT for four years and worried about how he'd ever move. After the course, he "had a huge amount of history/context there which is now all in the second brain. Being able to move between Chat/Claude and any other is amazing." His second brain is the set of context files, built on the course, that tells the AI who he is and how he works.
Context written as plain markdown files carries over between Claude and ChatGPT as it is. Skills, the saved instructions for jobs you repeat, need adapting, because each tool packages them differently.
Which should your team use, Claude or ChatGPT?
Claude, if you want people building agents, unless you need UK data storage or image generation:
- Up to 150 people building agents: Claude Team, with premium seats for your builders. Price it with the Claude pricing calculator.
- Over 150 people, or you need SCIM and audit logs: Claude Enterprise. The Claude Enterprise calculator shows what usage adds.
- You need UK data storage or image generation, or your agents already run well in ChatGPT: stay on ChatGPT. The ChatGPT pricing calculator prices Business.
- Already on ChatGPT Enterprise: move only if you want Claude Code for your builders. ChatGPT Enterprise has every security control Claude Enterprise has, plus UK storage.
James's private workshops run in Claude and Claude Code, ChatGPT and Codex, or Microsoft Copilot, whichever your team standardises on. Each person sets the tool up with their own context, and everyone leaves with agents getting work done for them. Tell him which tool you use on the scoping call.
Tagged: claude, chatgpt, team-rollout